MICHAEL Clarke Duncan, the hulking, prolific character actor whose dozens of films included an Oscar-nominated performance as a death row inmate in The Green Mile and such other box office hits as Armageddon, Planet of the Apes and Kung Fu Panda, is dead at age 54.

Duncan died Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for a heart attack, said his fiance, Reverend Omarosa Manigault, in a statement released by publicist Joy Fehily.
The muscular, 193cm Duncan, a former bodyguard who turned to acting in his 30s, 'suffered a myocardial infarction on July 13 and never fully recovered,' the statement said. 'Manigault is grateful for all of your prayers and asks for privacy at this time. Celebrations of his life, both private and public, will be announced at a later date.'
In the spring of 2012, Duncan had appeared in a video for PETA, the animal rights organisation, in which he spoke of how much better he felt since becoming a vegetarian three years earlier.

'I cleared out my refrigerator, about $5000 worth of meat,' he said. 'I'm a lot healthier than I was when I was eating meat.'

Duncan had a handful of minor roles before The Green Mile brought him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. The 1999 film, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, starred Tom Hanks as a corrections officer at a penitentiary in the.