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Michael Clarke Duncan’s life was proof that sometimes, dreams—and clichés—can come true: if you believe in yourself, put yourself in an environment where others believe in you and support you, and if you’re willing to sincerely work at it, you may achieve your goals.

Sounds like a pitch for a motivational seminar, doesn’t it? Well, sometimes…

When Duncan was digging ditches for gas lines in the Chicago area, his coworkers would tease him (if “teasing” is the right word for what construction workers would be doing) about his Hollywooddreams. They told him when Bruce Willis called, he’d be busy digging a hole for a gas pipe. He said (probably among other things) that one day they’d have to pay eight bucks to see his face.

Duncan moved to Los Angeles where he got jobs bodyguarding celebrities (Martin Lawrence and The Notorious B.I.G. among them) and started getting small roles on television shows (including The Jamie Foxx Show, Arli$$, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Living Single). His big break came when he was cast in Armageddon as Bear (in an ironic turn), part of a construction crew recruited to destroy an asteroid. Director Michael Bey recalls Duncan having some problems initially “relaxing” enough to work into the role but with some encouragement, he soon found his stride and by the end of shooting was given as crew award for “most improved actor.” He managed to hold his own among scene dominators (and stealers) like Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi. His next big break, perhaps his biggest, came when Bruce Willis was offered the part eventually played by Tom Hanks in The Green Mile. Willis turned the part down but told director Frank Darabont (who would later create AMC’s The Walking Dead) “I’ve got the perfect guy to play John Coffey.”

John Coffey was the gentle giant who possessed miraculous healing powers, wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to death. It was a tricky role for a relatively inexperienced actor, who had to share screen time with heavyweights like Hanks, James Cromwell, Patricia Clarkson, David Morse Harry Dean Stanton and the late Michael Jeter.

Duncan was disparaged for the part, many of his critics accusing him of playing another “Magic Negro,” the person of color whose only purpose is to solve white folks’ problems and maybe even die for them in the process. (The next year we’d get Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance.) But the part earned Duncan an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in only his second major film role. (He lost to Michael Caine, who won for The Cider House Rules.)

Duncan worked steadily after that and became a frequent player in genre films: in an inspired bit of cross-typecasting he was The Kingpin in Daredevil; one of the bad guys in Frank Miller’s Sin City, Balthazar in The Scorpion King, Colonel Attar in Tim Burton’s remake of The Planet of the Apes, and provided the voice for Kilowog in last year’s Green Lantern. Most recently he was the co-lead in the Fox television series, The Finder. He will also be seen in the upcoming dramas In the Hive and The Challenger.

There’s an exchange in The Green Mile where Paul, the head guard, says to Coffey on the day of his judgment, when God asks him why he killed one of his true miracles, what was he going to say. Coffey tells him to say he had performed a kindness; he was tired of all the pain he felt every day, it was like a piece of glass in his head all the time.

Michael Clarke Duncan never recovered from the heart attack he suffered last July. His passing, for us, is like that piece of glass. But for him, to be free of the pain he suffered every day since then, it’s a kindness.