Ray Stevenson, who in a 30-year career has played a wide range of television and movie roles, including a talkative soldier on HBO’s historical drama “Rome,” the pirate Blackbeard on the Starz series “Black Sails” and the asgardian warrior. Volstagg in the fantasy “Thor” movies died on Sunday. He was 58 years old.
His publicist, Nicki Fioravante, confirmed his death but did not provide further details. the italian newspaper the Republic said Stevenson died on the Italian island of Ischia, where he had been filming a movie.
Mr. Stevenson was born on May 25, 1964 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, according to the Internet Movie Database. He had started a career in interior design when, at age 20, he decided to try acting. Seeing John Malkovich in Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This” in London’s West End in the early 1990s was the catalyst.
“I was stunned by John’s performance,” he told the Californian newspaper The Fresno Bee in 2008. “Everyone else disappeared. I knew at that moment that there was something very valid in being an actor”.
He studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School in England, where in 1993 he played the title role in a production of “Macbeth”. Before she was out of the year, she landed a recurring role on a British miniseries, “The Dwelling Place.” She had worked more or less constantly ever since.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Stevenson appeared in several British television series, including the crime drama “Band of Gold.” He got his first major role in a movie in 2004, playing the knight Dagonet in “King Arthur,” with Clive Owen in the title role.
Then came “Roma,” a breakthrough role in HBO’s big-budget series about ancient Rome that was the network’s attempt to create the next buzz-worthy series after “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos.”
Stevenson’s character, Titus Pullo, was, as Alessandra Stanley put it in a 2005 review in The New York Times, “a drunken, womanizing lout, a sandal-clad football hooligan.” Titus Pullo’s friendship with another Roman soldier, played by Kevin McKidd, was one of the show’s most engaging subplots, and Mr. Stevenson, a hulking 6-foot-4 man, seemed on the brink of something big.
“He’s a kind of George Clooney on steroids,” wrote Chase Squires of The St. Petersburg Times of Florida in 2005. “By the time ‘Roma’ completes his run, the Irish-born English actor will likely be a star and a real contender for replace Russell Crowe when Hollywood tires of that actor’s notoriously bad behavior.”
But “Roma” fizzled out after two seasons, and Stevenson never reached Clooney’s stature. However, he landed several substantial roles in lavish projects, including three films from the Marvel Comics universe: “Thor” (2011), “Thor: The Dark World” (2013) and “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017). . All three were box office hits.
He often referred to the “Thor” stories as “Vikings in Space,” and in 2020 got a taste of the earthly version of that life when he joined the cast of the History Channel’s long-running series “Vikings.” He appeared throughout its sixth season.
His other roles included a gangster in the 2011 film “Kill the Irishman” and a British colonial official in the Indian film “RRR” (2022). He also played vigilante Frank Castle, also known as the Punisher, another character based on a comic. He took over that role in 2008’s “Punisher: War Zone,” after Dolph Lundgren played Castle in a 1989 film and Thomas Jane took his turn in 2004.
The 2008 film was an orgy of violence, as AO Scott noted in his review in The Times.
“Guys get their heads blown off, or cut up, or pierced with chair legs, or pulverized with their fists,” he wrote, “because that’s what’s expected and that’s what the fan base wants. will pay money to see.”
His character, Mr. Stevenson told The Oklahoman, was not supposed to be a hero but an anti-hero.
“It really is a one-way street and its own hell,” he said. “You don’t want to be Frank Castle.”
Mr. Stevenson’s marriage to actress Ruth Gemmell ended in divorce. He and his partner, Elisabetta Caraccia, had three children.