Brooklyn Nine-Nine Actor, Andre Braugher Died Of Lung Cancer – Publicist

When the Emmy-winning actor, Andre Braugher, who also starred in the series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Homicide: Life on the Street, died on Monday at age 61, his representatives only said that he had been through a brief illness.

However, his publicist, Jennifer Allen revealed the cause of death on Thursday, saying that Braugher died from lung cancer. The late Braugher generally revealed little about his private life, and his death was unexpected for many of his co-stars.

In 2014, Braugher told the New York Times that he stopped smoking and drinking years ago. The Chicago-born actor had his Hollywood breakthrough in the 1989 film Glory, acting alongside Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman.

He went on to play Detective Frank Pembleton, the lead role in the NBC police drama Homicide: Life on the Street, for seven seasons. He would win the first of two career Emmys for his work on the show.

Braugher was nominated for Emmys 11 times, four of them for the comic turn he took as Captain Ray Holt on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the Andy Samberg-starring series that ran for eight seasons on Fox and NBC. From award-winning Shakespearean roles to changing the face of TV in gritty dramas, the actor was astonishing. And his turn as Raymond Holt was laser-focused comedic excellence

He was a man blessed with incredible gravitas. Born in Chicago’s West Side to a blue-collar family, his early talent was promising enough to earn him a scholarship to study theatre at Stanford, after which he trained at Juilliard.

Although he performed Shakespeare on stage, winning an Obie award for his Henry V in the mid-90s, Braugher quickly found his niche onscreen, using the weight of his charisma to play figures of authority. His first role was on TV, as a detective in five separate Kojak television movies, setting a pattern that would last the rest of his career.

Braugher specialised in playing people whose character names came with a rank: Detective Winston Blake on Kojak; Corporal Thomas Searles in Glory; General George W Mancheck; Captain Marcus Chaplin; and Sergeant Carlos Diaz. He played doctors and district attorneys; in the 2010 Angelina Jolie movie Salt, he had the role of Secretary of Defence. – With The Guardian reports