MCD

Michael Clarke Duncan is dead.  He worked as a bodyguard for celebrities while doing bit parts in movies, often playing bodyguards or bouncers.  He got a good role and some attention in 1998 as one of Bruce Willis's crew in Armageddon, and Willis helped him get his next major role, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

This was the part of John Coffey in The Green Mile.  The movie's based on a Stephen King novel, and King has always had trouble writing African-Americans.  He seems afraid to make them flawed, so he tends to make them magical.  John Coffey follows this tradition, a giant black man put on death row (falsely, of course) who has the power to heal.  The role is mostly cliche, but Duncan does a great job finding the humanity in it, and the pathos.  He lost the Oscar to a very dull Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules.  He should have won.

Duncan worked in movies and TV regularly after that, even showing a flair for comedy, but he never got another role as good as Coffey.  Still, with his size and voice, he was always a memorable presence.