{"id":464046,"date":"2025-12-22T09:21:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T09:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/464046\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T09:21:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T09:21:14","slug":"chapter-two-actor-was-46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/464046\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Two’ Actor Was 46"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJames Ransone, the versatile character actor best known for his roles in The Wire, Tangerine, Generation Kill, It: Chapter Two and The Black Phone, died on Dec. 19. He was 46.<\/p>\n

\n\tRansone died by suicide, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn on June 2,\u00a01979, in Baltimore, Ransone studied at the George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology before attending the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan for a year.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe earned his first onscreen credit in 2001\u2019s The American Astronaut, but he scored his most notable role in The Wire in 2003. He played the impish Chester \u201cZiggy\u201d Sobotka in season two of the HBO drama, which centered on street-level drug dealing to the\u00a0Port of Baltimore. In the show, Ziggy was the goofy and brash failson of the respected union leader Frank Sobotka. Though the character, reportedly based on a real-life stevedore named Pinkie Bannion, only appeared in 12 episodes, he became one of the most memorable of the second season of the highly influential crime drama, and fan favorite scenes include Ziggy taking his duck to drink at the pub and also repeatedly exposing himself (Ransone wearing a particularly large prosthetic penis). <\/p>\n

\n\tIn interviews<\/a>, Ransone has said playing the Ziggy character turned out to be a shadow on his life and career after The Wire ended, particularly after the show became such an enduring cult favorite with a dedicated fanbase. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tRansone would work again with The Wire creator David Simon on the HBO miniseries Generation Kill (2008), and the HBO drama series Treme (2010-13). In Generation Kill, the searing Iraq War drama based on Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright\u2019s non-fiction story, Ransone played Corporal Josh Ray Person a member of a Marines battalion during the 2003 invasion. Ransone\u2019s witty character had some of the most memorable lines in the series, particularly in his interactions with Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd\u2019s character Sergeant Brad \u201cIceman\u201d Colbert.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tRansone appeared in\u00a0Anora\u00a0director Sean Baker\u2019s 2015 breakout film\u00a0Tangerine, playing another character called Chester, the shady boyfriend and pimp of a trans sex worker.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2019, Ransone starred as Eddie Kaspbrak in It: Chapter Two, alongside Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader and Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd. In the sequel, set 27 years after the first encounter with the terrifying Pennywise, the Losers Club had grown up and moved away, until a devastating phone call brings them back.<\/p>\n

\n\tRansone also played Max in 2021\u2019s The Black Phone and 2025\u2019s Black Phone 2, starring Mason Thames and Ethan Hawke. The first installment centered on a 13-year-old boy who\u2019s being held in a soundproof basement by a sadistic, masked killer. When a disconnected phone on the wall starts to ring, he soon discovers that he can hear the voices of the murderer\u2019s previous victims. <\/p>\n

\n\tAmong Ransone\u2019s dozens of other acting credits were Poker Face, SEAL Team, Deadwax, The First, Mosaic, It Happened In L.A., Bosch, Sinister 2, Oldboy, Low Winter Sun, Empire State, Sinister, How to Make It in America, Hawaii Five-0, Generation Kill, Law & Order, Nola and Third Watch.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2021, in a social media post, Ransone revealed that he had been sexually abused as a child. The actor accused a former tutor of repeatedly sexually assaulting him in the early 1990s when he was 12. In the Instagram post, Ransome wrote that he had endured a \u201clifetime of shame and embarrassment\u201d from the abuse and struggled with drug addiction in the years after.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Ransone, the versatile character actor best known for his roles in The Wire, Tangerine, Generation Kill, It:…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":464047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,593,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-464046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-obituaries","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115762488420393067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}