Character actor who specialized in criminals and corrupt cops also appeared in The Usual Suspects, Training Day, and Blue Streak
Peter Greene, the character actor known for playing villainous roles in Pulp Fiction and The Mask, has died at the age of 60.
The actor was found dead inside his New York City apartment Friday following a wellness check, his manager Gregg Edwards told NBC News. No cause of death was provided.
“Nobody played a bad guy better than Peter,” Edwards told NBC News. “But he also had, you know, a gentle side that most people never saw, and a heart as big as gold.”
The New Jersey-born Greene specialized in playing criminals, mobsters, and corrupt cops, as best exemplified by a trio of roles he landed in the mid-Nineties. He was perhaps best known for playing a sadistic, rapist security guard Zed in 1994’s Pulp Fiction, whose death by “medieval” means led Bruce Willis to deliver the oft-quoted “Zed’s dead, baby.”
Greene followed up that noteworthy role by playing the main mobster Dorian Tyrell in the Jim Carrey comic action film The Mask, and then portrayed “the fence” Redfoot in 1995’s The Usual Suspects.
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The actor first came to prominence with an acclaimed turn as a schizophrenic man in the 1993 indie film Clean, Shaven. Throughout the Nineties, Greene would appear in films like Judgment Night, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, and Blue Streak. Other notable roles over the past two decades include a corrupt narcotics officer in 2001’s Training Day and appearances on episodes of Hawaii Five-O, Justified, Chicago PD, and the John Wick spinoff series The Continental.
“He was one of the best character actors on the planet,” his manager Edwards told Deadline. “He was a good friend who would give you the shirt off his back. He was loved and will be missed.”
