The Wire actor James Ransone dies aged 46

Actor James Ransone died in Los Angeles on Friday. Photo / Getty Images

The Wire actor James Ransone, who played drug dealer Ziggy Sobotka in the hit HBO series, has died aged 46.

He died by suicide in Los Angeles on Friday, according to records from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.

His widow Jamie McPhee, with whom he shared two children, is raising funds through her social media profile in aid of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

The actor had talked candidly about being a survivor of sexual abuse in 2021 and the battle with addiction and recovery that followed.

He spent years addicted to heroin and told of how he achieved sobriety when he was 27.

‘Too much for me’

In a 2016 Interview Magazine profile, he said: “People think I got sober working on the Generation Kill. I didn’t.

“I sobered up six or seven months before that. I remember going to Africa and I was going to be there for almost a year. I was No 2 on the call sheet and I was like, ‘I think somebody made a mistake. This is too much responsibility for me’.”

He appeared in 12 episodes of The Wire in 2003 and also starred in Generation Kill, Treme and Amazon’s Bosch.

The Wire was a grim and gritty story of crime in Baltimore, and Ransone, a native of the city, described his character Ziggy as representative of the difficulties people face just trying to get by in Baltimore.

Ransone took on a range of roles, including Prom Night, Sinister, Sinister 2, Tangerine, Mr Right, IT Chapter Two, The Black Phone and the upcoming Black Phone 2.

His last TV appearance was in June in a season 2 episode of Poker Face, a US crime comedy-drama television series created by Rian Johnson for the streaming service Peacock.

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