With the death of The Wire's Lance Reddick, Hollywood has lost one of its great authority figures

It is always tragic when any actor dies before their latest work is released, but in the case of Lance Reddick, who died suddenly of natural causes on 17 March, at the age of 60, it is a particularly sad irony that his latest film, the action saga John Wick: Chapter 4, was due for release in cinemas only next week. With no obvious signs of ill health, he had been on the promotional trail just a few days ago, although he had been absent from the film’s New York premiere earlier this week.

With unfortunate timing, Reddick, who had played the all-knowing concierge Charon, had been giving interviews that are only just appearing now as the news of his death is announced, meaning that the release of the picture will inevitably be overshadowed by the demise of an actor who progressed from doing a one-day cameo in the first film to becoming an integral part of the increasingly complex John Wick mythology. In a statement, star Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski said: “We dedicate the film to his loving memory. We will miss him dearly.”

Reddick, who graduated from the Yale School of Drama after studying for an undergraduate degree in classical music composition, retained a healthily robust attitude towards the series’ wilder excesses. He claimed to be attracted by the opportunity “to play this quintessential gentleman with an African accent”, and that he was given the role after complaining to the film’s screenwriter Derek Kolstad over lunch about some of his experiences on the JJ Abrams-created sci-fi drama series Fringe, in which he played Philip Broyles, the straight-arrow head of the paranormal division that gives the show its name. Kolstad, like many others, had loved Fringe, and was instrumental in ensuring that Reddick took what would eventually become his late-era signature role.

He enjoyed his work on the films, especially the opportunity to act opposite the “wonderful human being” that is Reeves. But it was a particular quirk of his that, while his co-stars stayed in hotels barely less luxurious than the film’s Continental, where his character oversaw the assassin clientele’s antics, Reddick preferred to stay in the less salubrious surroundings of the mid-market Resident Inn chain. “I like to prepare my own food, and the Residence Inn has a big room and a big kitchen,” he said. “That’s all I need.”

The actor began his career in the late Nineties with small roles in blockbusters such as Godzilla and The Siege, but swiftly established himself with an eye-catching performance in the prison drama Oz as Johnny Basil, an undercover cop who ends up imprisoned for real in the hellish penitentiary after murdering one of his fellow inmates. It was a pivotal role that drew on Reddick’s innate dignity and charisma, while subverting them, and he described it as “the best group of actors I had ever worked with and the best writing I had worked with, at least on television”.

Oz subsequently led to his casting in what would be, pre-John Wick, his best-loved character: the upstanding but far from saintly Cedric Daniels in The Wire, a lieutenant in the Baltimore Police Department who wishes to uphold the law at all costs, often falling foul of his more laissez-faire superiors in the process.

It was an especially amusing running joke that whenever Daniels wished to discipline Dominic West’s Jimmy McNulty, he simply hissed the words “My office”, and the quick-tempered policeman would be reduced to a shamefaced little boy in the face of his superior’s icy anger. He appeared in more episodes of the show than any other actor, and became synonymous with one of the best-loved dramas ever made.  

Reddick suggested that he was cast because the producers of the show wanted “a name” in the part, which, post-Oz, he undoubtedly was. “It’s the only time in my life I really wondered, ‘Am I dreaming this?’” he said. “Because, it was like my life changed after that.” Although the self-described ‘homebody’ never craved fame and was happier being at home with his family, quietly reading, than attending celebrity-heavy parties, he was particularly pleased that the real-life police force responded well to The Wire: “I’ve never done any show that cops respond to more. And it’s always positive. More than once, I’ve had cops say, ‘That show is so real, it’s scary.’”

Reddick’s obvious intelligence and charisma meant that he was often cast as authority roles in television and film: not just in The Wire and Fringe, but as the Secret Service director David Gentry in the Gerald Butler vehicle Angel Has Fallen and the police chief Irvin Irving in the Michael Connelly adaptation Bosch. He seldom played villains, but when he did, they tended to be memorable, as with the nefarious scientist Albert Wesker in Netflix’s Resident Evil series, or his chilling appearance as Papa Legba, gatekeeper of the spirit world, in the American Horror Story instalment Coven. And, given his gravitas, it seems fitting that one of his final roles is Zeus, the king of the gods, in the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. 

Yet when he wasn’t playing ambitious police chiefs, all-knowing hotel concierges or powerful deities, the unassuming and polite Reddick found being taken seriously something of a burden. As he sighed in a 2005 interview: “I’m really goofy. I’ve had a hard time getting an opportunity to do any comedy since I started doing a lot of television because what I’ve become known for is intense dramatic character acting.” As his role in the John Wick series expanded with every film – from his small cameo in the first to full-on shotgun-pumping action heroics in the third – he was also able to flex this muscle for deadpan comedy. Fans of Reddick and Charon were eagerly anticipating more of the same in the new instalment.

The film’s inevitable success will be a fitting valediction to its star, but Lance Reddick’s far too premature death deprives his legions of admirers of decades’ worth of great performances. And that, rather than any of John Wick’s pugilistic antics, is what will linger in the mind over the coming weeks.