From E! Online:

REMEMBERED: Hollywood vet Michael Jeter, perhaps best known for his Emmy-winning role on Evening Shade and parts in The Green Mile and Jurassic Park III, died over the weekend in Los Angeles at the age of 50. Jeter also won a Tony for Grand Hotel.

More info:

Emmy-winning 'Evening Shade' actor Michael Jeter dies at 50

By Anthony Breznican
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Actor Michael Jeter, who played a shrimpy football coach on the television series "Evening Shade" and was known on "Sesame Street" as The Other Mr. Noodle, has died, his publicist said. He was 50.

Jeter's body was found in his Hollywood Hills home Sunday, publicist Dick Guttman said Monday. Friends said they had communicated with him as recently as Saturday, Guttman added.

An autopsy was planned. Guttman said Jeter, who was HIV-positive but had been in good health, apparently died of natural causes.

Jeter had been filming the Christmas movie "The Polar Express." Guttman said the producers believe there is enough footage to preserve Jeter's role in the film.

Jeter, a slim, 5-foot-4 inch (1.6-meter) actor with thinning red hair, bushy mustache and a broad grin, played tough runts, sniveling wimps and big-hearted underdogs.

"I often see myself in my private life as being a pinched and confined person. When I get on the stage I can open up," he said in a 1992 interview.

Among his favorite roles was the kindly Mr. Noodle on "Sesame Street." The character was nicknamed The Other Mr. Noodle when Jeter took over the role from Bill Irwin. The two Noodles, the show explained, were brothers.

"Kids would recognize him and come running up to him, 'Mr. Noodle! Mr. Noodle,'" Guttman recalled. "He really loved that."

On "Evening Shade," which ran from 1990 to 1994, Jeter played the blustery assistant football coach Herman Stiles opposite the calm, paternal lead character played by Burt Reynolds. He won an Emmy Award for best supporting actor in 1992.

He was also in 1998's "Patch Adams," 1999's "The Green Mile" and in 2001's "Jurassic Park III."

Jeter, who grew up in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, started as a stage actor and won a 1990 supporting actor Tony Award as provincial German Jewish bookkeeper Otto Kringelein in the musical "Grand Hotel."

How sad. I really liked him. :( I never knew he was HIV-positive though.

Rest in peace Michael Jeter


Aaron