Ray Stevenson, the Northern Irish actor who played the villainous British governor in RRR, Volstagg in the Thor films and the main antagonist in the upcoming Star Wars series Ahsoka, passed away at the age of 58.
Stevenson’s representatives said he died on Sunday, four days before his birthday. Italian newspaper La Repubblica informed of He was hospitalized with a sudden illness on the island of Ischia while in production on the film Casino in Ischia.
Stevenson was born in 1964 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. His family moved to England when he was eight. After attending the Bristol Old Vic Theater School and working in British television for years, she made her film debut in Paul Greengrass’ 1998 film The Theory of Flight. In 2004 he appeared as a Knight of the Round Table in Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur and several years later played the lead in the pre-Disney Marvel adaptation Punisher: War Zone.
Although Punisher wasn’t the best-reviewed film, he got another taste of Marvel in the first three Thor films, in which he played the Asgardian warrior Volstagg. Other major film roles include The Divergent Trilogy, GI Joe: Retribution and The Transporter: Refueled.
A looming presence at 1.91 m (six foot three) tall, Stevenson played soldiers from his past and present; He once said in an interview, “I guess I’m an old warrior at heart.”
On the small screen he was the evil Titus Pullo in the HBO series Rome, a role that really propelled his career in the US and won him a SAG card at the age of 44. The series ran from 2005 to 2007.
“That was one of the prime years of my life,” Stevenson said in an interview. “It forced me to sit in my skin and say, just do the job. The job is enough.
In a Variety review of Rome, Brian Lowery wrote that “the idealized Stevenson certainly comes across as a brawler, whore and none-too-bright warrior—a force of nature who, despite her excesses, somehow manages to find her feet.” But keeps coming down”.
He was Blackbeard in the Starz series Black Sails, Commander Jack Swinburne in the German television series Das Boot, and Othere on Vikings.
Stevenson has also done voice work as Gar Saxon in Star Wars Rebels and The Clone Wars, and has a role in the upcoming Star Wars live-action series Ahsoka, playing bad guy Belan Skoal. The eight-episode season is expected on Disney+ in August.
In an interview with Backstage in 2020, Stevenson said that his acting idols were “the likes of Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman”.
Stevenson, he said, “never performed poorly, and within that capacity was brave and fearless.” “There was never this young, hot leading man; These were men I could identify with.
Stevenson has three sons with the Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Caraccia, whom he met while working on Rome.
