If you’ve watched your share of eighties and nineties TV and movies, surely Michael Wright will be a face you recognize. A character actor with a long list of credits, including Miami Vice, V, Oz, and movies like The Principal and The Five Heartbeats, the actor sadly passed away earlier this week. According to TMZ, “he suffered heart failure coupled with complications of a rare degenerative neurological disease called Marchiafava-Bignami.” He was seventy years old.
Wright’s signature role, for many, likely remains The Five Heartbeats. Directed by Robert Townsend, the film was the fictionalized story of a Motown-style Black pop group in the sixties. Wright had one of the best roles in the movie, with him playing the troubled lead singer, Eddie, whose descent into drugs and alcohol plays a part in the band’s downfall. Speaking for myself, I remember him most from his turn as the villain, Victor Duncan, in the James Belushi action flick The Principal, which I’ve always been a fan of. Wright had a unique, intense, often frightening presence, which usually led to him being cast as unstable characters, such as in the Wesley Snipes gangster drama Sugar Hill, where he played Snipes’ troubled brother.
Wright also had a memorable role on Miami Vice as “The Savage,” a CIA operative turned serial killer in the third-season episode “Duty and Honor.” But he also occasionally played good guys, with him being one of the stars of the landmark miniseries V, playing human resistance leader Elias Taylor in the original miniseries, as well as its sequel, V: The Last Battle, and the TV spin-off. In later years, he also had a memorable role on HBO’s Oz as the drug-addled inmate Omar White.
While never a household name, Michael Wright had a long, distinguished career in front of the camera, and some of his roles, particularly in The Five Heartbeats, should be rediscovered, as they stand the test of time. May he rest in peace.