Ray Stevenson Remembered by Punisher: War Zone Producer

Punisher: War Zone producer Gale Anne Hurd shared a tribute to star Ray Stevenson, who died Sunday at age 58. The Irish actor was in Italy filming director Frank Ciota's Cassino in Ischia when he was hospitalized with an undisclosed illness on Saturday, according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Stevenson's publicist has since confirmed reports of his death. After making his film debut in 1998's The Theory of Flight opposite Helena Bonham Carter, Stevenson went on to play the Arthurian knight Dagonet in 2004's King Arthur before landing the starring role as the gun-toting vigilante Frank Castle in 2008's Punisher: War Zone.

"#RIP #RayStevenson whose on-screen presence rivaled the greats, and who turned any role into a memorable one," Hurd tweeted Monday. "I was blessed to have had the opportunity to work with him."

Hurd — whose credits include the original Terminator and Aliens, The Abyss, Hulk, and The Punisher — produced the Lexi Alexander-directed Marvel Comics adaptation rebooting the 2004 film that starred Thomas Jane as the skull-clad crusader waging a violent, one-man war on crime. Stevenson would later voice a kid-friendly version of the character in a 2009 episode of the animated Marvel series The Super Hero Squad Show. 

Lionsgate released the explicitly gory and R-rated War Zone in December 2008, pitting Stevenson's Punisher against mobster Jigsaw (Dominic West), the gleeful serial killer Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison), and gangs of gunned-down gangsters as he's pursued by Detective Martin Soap (Dash Mihok) and his anti-Punisher Task Force. The film flopped at the box office and was panned by critics, who generally praised Stevenson's performance as the vengeful vigilante on a mission to avenge the deaths of his family murdered by the mob.

For his turn as the armed-to-the-teeth Marvel Comics character, Stevenson turned to Garth Ennis' Punisher MAX series that warned readers of its graphic content.

"When I first read it, I thought, 'This is just extremely violent. What the hell is this?' But very quickly Garth Ennis' writing sucked me right in. I thought, 'My god, he doesn't shy away,'" Stevenson told Collider in 2009. "It does raise moral issues and psychological issues and he doesn't pull away from it. He will throw it in there and commit to it. It was his writing that then brought me in. In fact, the extreme violence — if you water it down and try and make it a bit less — you wouldn't get the same stakes as far as the moral issues and the price that's paid. You need that extreme violence as the foil to Frank's dark, bleak existence. There's a price to be paid. You don't want to be Frank. It's strange to have the sort of lead or hero of a film that you don't actually want to be."

In playing the anti-hero, Stevenson explained, "That's what intrigued me. And I said to them, 'I don't want people walking out of the theater wanting to be Frank Castle.' I said, 'We've gotta get it in the script. The price that's paid.' He's in such a dark place. He may have made his peace with that, but there's no light at the end of the tunnel. There's no redemption for Frank. That's deeply intriguing."

Stevenson would go on to appear in such films as The Book of Eli, The Other Guys, Kill the Irishman, The Three Musketeers, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation. In 2011, he played the Asgardian warrior Volstagg opposite Chris Hemsworth's god of Thunder in Marvel Studios' Thor, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Stevenson reprised that role in 2013's Thor: The Dark World and 2017's Thor: Ragnarok, also appearing as Marcus Eaton in three films from the young adult Divergent Series.

Most recently, Stevenson starred as Governor Scott Buxton in India's Oscar-winning blockbuster RRR, and he replaced Kevin Spacey in the lead role of the historical drama 1242: Gateway to the West. He'll be posthumously credited in the upcoming live-action Star Wars series Ahsoka.