MUMBAI: Michael Clarke Duncan, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of a death row inmate in the 1999 film The Green Mile, expired on Monday less than eight weeks after suffering a heart attack. He was 54.

Duncan died in Los Angeles, Announcing his demise, his fiancé and reality television star Omarosa Manigault, said in a statement that Duncan suffered from a heart attack on 13 July but "never fully recovered." The actors came at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles.

Duncan's deep voice and hulking 6-foot-5 (1.96-metre) frame gave him a commanding screen presence. Having once dug ditches for a gas company in his native Chicago, Duncan hen moved to Los Angeles to pursue his career as an actor.

He worked as a bodyguard and bouncer and played a few roles of that kind in both films and televisions before landing a small part in the 1998 film Armageddon.

That led him to bag a much larger role in the 1999 prison drama The Green Mile with Tom Hanks. The film had the actor play an inmate with magical powers who is put to death for two murders he did not commit.