James Ransone, who played Chester “Ziggy” Sabotka in 12 episodes of the second season of “The Wire,” died Friday. He was 46.
The actor’s death was confirmed by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, which listed the cause of death as a suicide.
Ransone’s career also included 20 years of horror and thriller films such as “Sinister” (2012) and “It: Chapter Two” (2019). In a 2019 interview with The Lumberjack, he described himself as an “under-the-radar character actor” and added, ” I’m just a scrappy punk rocker who ended up in this weird, big cultural phenomenon.”
Ransone also named the HBO miniseries “Generation Kill” as his favorite project up to that time.
“I lived in Africa for almost a year shooting that — eight or nine months — and that was so awesome for a number of reasons,” he explained. “I got to spend a lot of time with vets who had just come home from the Iraq War, and my family has a long history of that. We have a lot of veterans in the family. It was just a really big, great, fun adventure that also means a lot, personally.”
Ransone, who grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, dropped out of film school when he was 19 and worked as a photographer throughout his twenties. In an interview with Interview Magazine he revealed attending an arts school instead of a traditional public high school “saved” him.
He further elaborated on his relationship with acting and noted: “I get a lot more catharsis from taking pictures or painting or making short films. You have some control. I think all art—if it’s good—is a result of really trying to create something that you can’t put into words.”
The experience of shooting “Generation Kill” was a “highlight of my life,” he also said. “Living in Africa, being around the dudes who were being written about—since my dad is a Vietnam vet. Being around these marines who had fought in war and they were young, I got to see some version of my dad as a young man. A lot of things started to make sense to me in a different way. I became really close with Evan Wright—the guy who wrote the book [the series was based on]—and I became really close with some of the marines still to this day.”
In 2021 Ransone revealed he was a victim of rape and sexual assault as a child. Ransone posted a letter on Instagram that he sent to his alleged abuser, Timothy Rualo, who worked at Sudbrook Magnet Middle School at the time the letter was written. Ransone also notified the police of the accusation, but was told they were not interested in pursuing it.
James Ransone was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He is survived by his wife, Jamie McPhee, and their two children.
