Source: Variety / Getty
Veteran actor and Emmy Award winner Andre Braugher’s cause of death has been revealed to be due to lung cancer.
The entertainment world has been sending their tributes to the late actor Andre Braugher, who died on Monday at his home in New Jersey. At the time, the cause of death for the veteran performer was not released to the public, with representatives only citing that he dealt with “a brief illness”. On Thursday (December 14), his publicist Jennifer Allen informed press outlets that Braugher’s death was due to lung cancer.
Braugher was known for adamantly keeping his private life private, only opening up about it in a thorough interview for the New York Times Magazine in 2014. In discussing his life away from the camera (Braugher leaves behind his wife, actress Ami Brabson, and three sons along with brother Charles Jennings and his mother Sally Braugher), he stated that he had “stumbling blocks” and that he had given up smoking and drinking alcohol years beforehand. “I won’t go into details, but I have not always been at the top of my game, and that has a cost,” he said before remarking, “There won’t be a memoir.”
The 61-year-old Braugher was best known for his intense and stoic roles, getting his breakthrough in the 1989 drama Glory alongside Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. From there, he went on to play Detective Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street, the hit NBC police procedural by Barry Levinson that ran for seven seasons earning Braugher the first of his two Emmy Awards. He would be nominated 11 times overall, with four of them for his role as Captain Raymond Holt on the Fox and NBC comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The Chicago native was also an acclaimed theater actor who cherished Shakespearean roles.
His most recent role was as New York Times editor-in-chief Dean Baquet in She Said, the 2022 film focusing on journalists who broke the story of disgraced film executive Harvey Weinstein’s years of sexually abusing women. The family of Andre Braugher has asked that in place of flowers, donations should be made to the Classical Theater of Harlem, where he was vice chairman of the board. The theater’s Associate Artistic Director, Carl Cofield, shared a photo of himself with Braugher on Instagram, writing: “Andrè you were the light for so many of us.”
