Actor Michael Wright, best known for leading The Five Heartbeats and appearing in Sugar Hill, has died in Los Angeles aged 70. His death marks the loss of a distinctive performer whose work spanned influential Black cinema, television drama and theatre-trained acting.

Wright died on Wednesday from heart failure and complications linked to Marchiafava-Bignami disease, a rare degenerative neurological disorder, according to TMZ. He played singer Eddie King Jr. in the 1991 musical drama The Five Heartbeats, Raynathan Skuggs in 1994’s Sugar Hill, Resistance fighter Elias Taylor in V, and inmate Omar White in 22 episodes of HBO’s Oz. Born in New York City in 1956, he began acting through a work-study place at the Lee Strasberg Institute and made his film debut in The Wanderers in 1979.