Ray Stevenson, actor in Thor, RRR and other films, dies at 58

LONDON – British actor Ray Stevenson, who in a 30-year career played a wide range of roles in television and films – among them a talkative soldier in the HBO historical drama Rome (2005 to 2007), the pirate Blackbeard in the Starz series Black Sails (2014 to 2017) and the Asgardian warrior Volstagg in the Thor fantasy movies – died aged 58 on Sunday, four days before his birthday.

His publicist Nicki Fioravante confirmed his death, but provided no further details.

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica said Stevenson died on the Italian island of Ischia, where he had been filming a movie.

Stevenson was born on May 25, 1964, in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, according to the Internet Movie Database.

He had begun a career in interior design when, in his mid-20s, he decided to try acting.

Seeing American actor John Malkovich in the Lanford Wilson play Burn This in London’s West End in the early 1990s was the catalyst.

“I was dumbstruck by John’s performance,” he told the California newspaper The Fresno Bee in 2008. “Everybody else disappeared. I knew at that moment there was something very valid about being an actor.”

He studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in England, where in 1993, he played the title role in a production of Macbeth. Before the year was over, he had landed a recurring role in a British miniseries, The Dwelling Place (1994).

He had worked more or less steadily ever since.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Stevenson appeared on various British TV series, including the crime drama Band Of Gold (1995 to 1997). He landed his first significant film role in 2004, playing the knight Dagonet in King Arthur, with English actor Clive Owen in the title role.

Then came Rome, a breakthrough role in a big-budget HBO series about ancient Rome that was the network’s attempt to create the next buzz-generating series after Sex And The City (1998 to 2004) and The Sopranos (1999 to 2007).

Stevenson’s character, Titus Pullo, was, as Alessandra Stanley put it in a 2005 review in The New York Times, “a drunken, womanising lout – a soccer hooligan in sandals”.

Pullo’s friendship with another Roman soldier was among the show’s most appealing subplots, and Stevenson, a large man at 1.93m, seemed on the verge of something big.

“He’s kind of George Clooney on steroids,” Chase Squires of The St Petersburg Times of Florida wrote in 2005. “By the time Rome completes its run, the Irish-born English actor will probably be a star, and a very real candidate to replace Russell Crowe when Hollywood gets tired of that actor’s notoriously bad behaviour.”

But Rome flamed out after two seasons, and Stevenson never quite achieved Clooney-esque stature.

He did, however, land a number of meaty roles in lavish projects, including three movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thor (2011), Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Thor: Ragnarok (2017). All three were box-office smashes.

He often referred to the Thor stories as “Vikings in space” and, in 2020, he got a taste of the earthbound version of that life when he joined the cast of the long-running History Channel series Vikings (2013 to 2020). He appeared throughout its sixth season.

His other roles included a gangster in the 2011 movie Kill The Irishman and a British colonial official in the Indian film RRR (2022).

He also played the vigilante Frank Castle, also known as the Punisher, another character based on a comic book. He took on that role in 2008 in Punisher: War Zone, after Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren had played Castle in a 1989 movie and American actor Thomas Jane had taken his turn in 2004.

The 2008 movie was an orgy of violence, as A.O. Scott noted in his review in the Times.

“Guys get their heads blown off, or severed, or pierced with chair legs, or pulverised with fists,” he wrote, “because that’s what they have coming and that’s what the fanbase will pay money to see.”

His character, Stevenson told The Oklahoman, was supposed to be not a hero, but an antihero.

“He really is on a one-way path and in his own hell,” he said. “You don’t want to be Frank Castle.”

Stevenson’s marriage to English actress Ruth Gemmell ended in divorce after eight years. He and his partner, Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Caraccia, had three children. NYTIMES