Actor Michael Duncan Dies of Natural Causes

Michael Clarke Duncan, star of “The Green Mile.”

The Los Angeles coroner’s office has confirmed that The Green Mile star Michael Clarke Duncan died of natural causes at Cedars Sinai Medical Center after suffering a heart attack two months ago.

Chief Coroner Ed Winter said Duncan’s personal physician signed off on the report.

A former ditch-digger for a natural gas company in his native Chicago, Duncan, 54, began his Hollywood saga as a celebrity bodyguard in the mid-1990s. He received his first big acting break playing a member of the drilling team sent into space to blow up an asteroid heading to Earth in the big-budget 1998 Bruce Willis movie Armageddon. But it was The Green Mile, starring Tom Hanks as a Depression-era Louisiana death-row prison guard, that thrust the 6-foot-5, 300-plus-pound Duncan into the limelight. He portrayed John Coffey, a gentle giant with supernatural powers who has been sentenced to death for the murder of two young white girls.

Duncan was laid to rest in an invitation-only service on Monday, Sept 10, with his fiancée, reality-TV-star Rev. Omarosa Manigault, participating. He is survived by his mother and other relatives.