Actor James Ransone, 46, died by suicide on Dec. 19. He was best known for playing Ziggy Sobotka in The Wire, Cpl. Josh Ray Person in Generation Kill, the Deputy in Sinister and Sinister 2, Chester in Tangerine, Eddie Kaspbrak in It Chapter Two, and Max in The Black Phone. He was born and raised in Baltimore and said that “Baltimore breeds a really specific type of weirdo” (I lived in Baltimore in the ’70s, and he wasn’t kidding—John Waters made documentaries). Ransone also worked as a musician and photographer (he assisted Patrick McMullan). Besides the roles name above, he appeared in Ed, Third Watch, John Waters’s A Dirty Shame, Poker Face, It Happened in L.A., and Bosch. Ransone told interviewer Ethan Sapienza, “I still wrestle with the catharsis of acting. I don’t end up playing a lot of likable characters, so I find myself living in a lot of unlikable skin. As a result of that I don’t always feel good . . . I’m never like, ‘Wow, the muses really came through on that one!’ I never see that, but that’s the bar that we try to aim for. More often than not I fail disastrously, but so long as I remember that that’s the bar. At least there’s something there.”
