Michael Clarke Duncan has died

Michael Clarke Duncan, the 6’5″, 300 pound giant who went from digging ditches for a natural gas company in his native Chicago to an Academy Award nominated actor, died yesterday at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA after complications from a heart attack he suffered on July 13. He was 54, and is surv-Wait that dude was 54? Holy crap. He looked better at 54 than me at 24. Oh I am so fucked.

Tom Hanks, who starred with Duncan in ‘The Green Mile’, said…

“I am terribly saddened at the loss of Big Mike. He was the treasure we all discovered on the set of ‘The Green Mile.’ He was magic. He was a big love of a man and his passing leaves us stunned.”

And director Frank Darabount said…

“I’m devastated at the loss of Michael Clarke Duncan, one of the finest people I’ve ever had the privilege to work with or know. Michael was the gentlest of souls—an exemplar of decency, integrity, and kindness. Our experience making ‘The Green Mile’ together was immersive and incredible, a once-in-a-lifetime journey. What sticks most in my mind was his devotion to his craft and the strides he made as an artist during that time, which was beyond inspiring to those of us who took the journey with him.
“Michael has left us far, far too soon. We lost a great man and a great spirit today.”

I always liked Duncan most in ‘Talladega Nights’, because it wasn’t a role for a huge guy, he was just a guy who happened to be huge. It let him just be an actor and he was great in it. The LA Times says no formal investigation of his death is his planned, though it couldn’t hurt to arrest and convict Lindsay Lohan for it just in case.