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Paul Benjamin, who played one of the men on the corner in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” died June 28, Lee announced on Instagram.

“I’m sad to write that the great actor Paul Benjamin, who played Ml, far left, passed this past Friday, two days before the 30th anniversary of ‘Do the Right Thing.’ Rest in Paradise,” the director wrote.

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I’m Sad To Write That The Great Actor Paul Benjamin on Jul 2, 2019 at 10:15am Pdt

Born in South Carolina, Benjamin started out doing Shakespeare on stage in New York, and made his film debut with a small role as a bartender in “Midnight Cowboy.” He had a featured role in “Across 110th Street” in 1972, and appeared in Blaxploitation films like “The Education of Sonny Carson” and “Friday Foster” with Pam Grier.

Among his other appearances were in Richard Pryor comedy “Some Kind of Hero,...

Paul Benjamin, who appeared in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, has died. Lee announced on Instagram that the veteran actor died June 28. The cause of death was not immediately known. Benjamin was 81.

Benjamin, who played one of the three wise Brooklyn “cornermen” in Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing, began his career in 1969 as a bartender in Midnight Cowboy. He went to play small roles in Sidney Lumet’s The Anderson Tapes and Born to Win, then segued into more extensive TV work later in the 1970s.

He appeared as a death row inmate in a 1988 episode of In The Heat of the Night and also in the 1994 pilot episode of ER, which led to his recurring role of homeless man Al Ervin during the next few seasons. Benjamin also worked on the American Masters documentary of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ralph Ellison, which aired on PBS, as...

Paul Benjamin, the veteran actor who portrayed one of the three wise Brooklyn "cornermen" in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, has died. He was 81.

Benjamin died June 28, Lee announced on Instagram. No other details of his death were immediately available.

His other noteworthy roles included a bank robber who rips off the mafia in Across 110th Street (1972), the father of a folk singer (Roger E. Mosely) in Leadbelly (1976), the embittered prisoner English in Escape From Alcatraz (1979) and Henry, the owner of the model train hobby shop, in The Station Agent (2003).

Benjamin also starred in the 1979 ...

Turning a blind eye to most of the season's big epic movies, SAG chose to lavish nominations for its 10th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on smaller movies about little people -- quite literally in the case of Miramax Films' The Station Agent, which made an unexpectedly strong showing. Agent earned a best actor nomination for its leading man, the 4-foot-6-inch Peter Dinklage, who plays a misanthropic dwarf who inherits a train station; a best actress nomination for Patricia Clarkson, who portrays a lonely divorcee; and an ensemble acting nom for its cast, which also includes Bobby Cannavale, Paul Benjamin, Raven Goodwin and Michelle Williams. In the category of outstanding performance by a male actor in a lead role, Dinklage will face off against Johnny Depp, who commands the seas as a flamboyant pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl; Ben Kingsley, who stars as an Iranian immigrant defending his home in House of Sand and Fog; Bill Murray, who headlines as an actor adrift in Tokyo in Lost in Translation; and Sean Penn, who faces the loss of his daughter in Mystic River. Dinklage and Murray are first-time SAG nominees, while Penn has been nominated twice before in the category.

Turning a blind eye to most of the season's big epic movies, SAG chose to lavish nominations for its 10th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on smaller movies about little people -- quite literally in the case of Miramax Films' The Station Agent, which made an unexpectedly strong showing. Agent earned a best actor nomination for its leading man, the 4-foot-6-inch Peter Dinklage, who plays a misanthropic dwarf who inherits a train station; a best actress nomination for Patricia Clarkson, who portrays a lonely divorcee; and an ensemble acting nom for its cast, which also includes Bobby Cannavale, Paul Benjamin, Raven Goodwin and Michelle Williams. In the category of outstanding performance by a male actor in a lead role, Dinklage will face off against Johnny Depp, who commands the seas as a flamboyant pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl; Ben Kingsley, who stars as an Iranian immigrant defending his home in House of Sand and Fog; Bill Murray, who headlines as an actor adrift in Tokyo in Lost in Translation; and Sean Penn, who faces the loss of his daughter in Mystic River. Dinklage and Murray are first-time SAG nominees, while Penn has been nominated twice before in the category.