Peter Greene, a character actor who made a career out of playing villains, including in “Pulp Fiction,” “The Mask” and dozens of other films and television shows, has died in New York. He was 60.
Mr. Greene’s death was confirmed on Saturday by his manager, Gregg Edwards, who said the actor had been found dead in his apartment in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan on Friday. A neighbor had complained about music playing for 24 hours and a wellness check had been performed. Mr. Edwards did not provide a cause of death.
Over a four-decade career, Mr. Greene stood comfortably in a villain’s shoes, bringing to life a range of characters who haunted audiences with their sadism and moral corruption.
In Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” (1994), Mr. Greene portrayed Zed, a security guard who sexually assaults Marsellus Wallace, played by Ving Rhames. Later that year, he starred as the mobster Dorian, opposite Jim Carrey, in the comedy “The Mask.” In 2001, he played a corrupt cop alongside Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in “Training Day,” agreeing to help cover up the murder of a retired narcotics officer.
“He was one of the greatest character actors on the planet,” Mr. Edwards said. “He was completely immersed in the character.”
Mr. Greene often improvised on set, Mr. Edwards added, either charming directors or frustrating them. He liked to “bring his own thoughts and feelings to the character,” Mr. Edwards said.
In 1995, when Mr. Greene portrayed the fence Redfoot in “The Usual Suspects,” when improvised a scene in which his character flicks a lit cigarette into the eye of Michael McManus, played by Stephen Baldwin.
Peter Greene was born on Oct. 8, 1965, in Montclair, N.J. He began acting in his 20s and took classes at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute in Manhattan. His first credited role was in an episode of the 1990 television crime drama “Hardball,” according to IMDb.
Mr. Greene’s first major film role came three years later in “Clean, Shaven,” a psychological drama directed by Lodge Kerrigan. Mr. Greene plays Peter Winter, a possible murderer who suffers from schizophrenia and who, after being released from a mental institution, tries to get his daughter back from her adoptive family.
Janet Maslin, reviewing the film for The New York Times, wrote that Mr. Greene “turns Peter into a compellingly anguished, volatile character,” adding that his presence on onscreen was “unnervingly chilly.”
“‘Clean, Shaven’ is my favorite thing I ever did, because I was immersed in a character who had troubles and he wanted to relay it,” Mr. Greene told an interviewer in 2022.
Mr. Greene was initially excited when he was asked to portray Zed in “Pulp Fiction,” he told the interviewer Sissy Gamache in 2016, but his enthusiasm waned after reading the script.
“I didn’t want to do that,” he said of portraying a rapist who chooses between assaulting Marsellus Wallace or Butch Coolidge, played by Bruce Willis. “The way it was written was just brutal,” Mr. Greene said. “That was a hard thing to do.”
In 1998, Mr. Greene appeared alongside Ben Stiller and Elizabeth Hurley in “Permanent Midnight,” directed by David Veloz. Ms. Maslin wrote that Mr. Greene’s performance as a drug dealer was “scarily authentic.”
Mr. Greene appeared in dozens of other film and television projects, including “Blue Streak” (1999); 13 episodes of “The Black Donnellys” (2007); and “Training Day.”
Before his death, Mr. Greene had been working on a project designed to raise awareness of the deaths that have resulted from the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to Mr. Edwards.
Working with Jason Alexander and Kathleen Turner, Mr. Greene was co-producing and narrating a documentary, “From the American People: The Withdrawal of U.S.A.I.D.” That project is still in production, Mr. Edwards said.
Mr. Greene is survived by a brother and a sister.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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