Ray Stevenson, actor in ‘Thor’ and other films, dies at age 58

Ray Stevenson, who in a 30-year career played a wide range of roles in television and films, among them a talkative soldier in the HBO historical drama “Rome,” the pirate Blackbeard in the Starz series “Black Sails” and the Asgardian warrior Volstagg in the “Thor” fantasy movies, died Sunday. He was 58.

His publicist, Nicki Fioravante, confirmed his death but provided no further details. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica said Stevenson died on the Italian island of Ischia, where he had been filming a movie.

Stevenson was born May 25, 1964, in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, according to the Internet Movie Database. He had begun a career in interior design when, in his mid-20s, he decided to try acting. Seeing John Malkovich in the Lanford Wilson play “Burn This” in London’s West End in the early 1990s was the catalyst.

“I was dumbstruck by John’s performance,” he told the California newspaper The Fresno Bee in 2008. “Everybody else disappeared. I knew at that moment there was something very valid about being an actor.”

He studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School in England, where in 1993, he played the title role in a production of “Macbeth.” Before the year was over, he had landed a recurring role in a British miniseries, “The Dwelling Place.” He had worked more or less steadily ever since.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Stevenson appeared on various British TV series, including the crime drama “Band of Gold.” He landed his first significant film role in 2004, playing the knight Dagonet in “King Arthur,” with Clive Owen in the title role.

Then came “Rome,” a breakthrough role in a big-budget HBO series about ancient Rome that was the network’s attempt to create the next buzz-generating series after “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos.”

Stevenson’s character, Titus Pullo, was, as Alessandra Stanley put it in a 2005 review in The New York Times, “a drunken, womanizing lout — a soccer hooligan in sandals.” Titus Pullo’s friendship with another Roman soldier was among the show’s most appealing subplots, and Stevenson, a large man at 6-foot-4, seemed on the verge of something big.