Spider-Man and Do The Right Thing actor Bill Nunn, 63

American actor Bill Nunn has died of leukaemia at the age of 63.

He was best known for his roles as Radio Raheem in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing and Robbie Robertson in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man film trilogy.

Nunn was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of William G. Nunn, Jr., a well-known journalist and editor at the Pittsburgh Courier, as well as a National Football League scout.

His paternal grandfather was the first African American football player at George Westinghouse High School.

Nunn was educated at Schenley High School, Pittsburgh, and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he studied English.

It was while at Morehouse that he fell by chance into acting after accompanying a friend to an audition for a play.

The director asked Nunn if he would fill out the cast. “He said ‘yeah’,” recalled his sister, Lynell. “So it wasn’t something he initially sought out, but once he got a taste of it he fell in love.”

By the time he graduated in 1976, he had decided to put aside his ambitions to become a writer and focus on acting. He stayed in Atlanta after graduating and was an artist in residence at Spelman College.

Nunn made his acting debut in the 1988 Spike Lee film School Daze. He is best known for roles as Radio Raheem in Lee’s Do the Right Thing and as Nino Brown’s bodyguard Duh Duh Duh Man in New Jack City.