{"id":37485,"date":"2020-08-29T02:09:26","date_gmt":"2020-08-29T06:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=37485"},"modified":"2020-08-29T02:14:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-29T06:14:16","slug":"actor-chadwick-boseman-portrayer-of-jackie-robinson-dead-at-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2020\/08\/29\/actor-chadwick-boseman-portrayer-of-jackie-robinson-dead-at-43\/","title":{"rendered":"Actor Chadwick Boseman, Portrayer of Jackie Robinson, Dead at 43"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the day that Major League Baseball is celebrating Jackie Robinson and his legacy, the man who played Robinson in the critically-acclaimed biopic <i>42<\/i>\u00a0has died. Chadwick Boseman was 43. The actor had been fighting colon cancer for four years, according to a statement released by his family.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong><em>42<\/em> Actor Chadwick Boseman Dead at 43<\/strong><\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"und\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/aZ2JzDf5ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/aZ2JzDf5ai<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Chadwick Boseman (@chadwickboseman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chadwickboseman\/status\/1299530165463199747?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 29, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Arguably the actor\u2019s most notable role came in Marvel\u2019s 2018 <i>Black Panther<\/i> film, playing the lead character, T\u2019Challa. However, Boseman\u2019s first leading role was Jackie Robinson in <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/2020\/03\/16\/top-ten-baseball-movies-list\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i>42<\/i><\/a>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Following the success of that debut, Boseman earned lead roles in <i>Get On Up<\/i> as James Brown, <i>Marshall<\/i> as Thurgood Marshall, and in <i>Black Panther<\/i> as T\u2019Challa. He also made many appearances throughout the Avengers series. Boseman made his feature film debut playing Floyd Little in <i>The Express: The Ernie Davis Story<\/i>, a movie about the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Boseman was born in Anderson, South Carolina. In his junior year of high school, he wrote his first play. He later attended Howard University, where he earned a Bachelors in Directing. Boseman proposed to his longtime girlfriend Taylor Simone Ledward in October of 2019, and they reportedly tied the knot earlier this year.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Odd Timing<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Boseman\u2019s death comes on the same day that MLB celebrates the life of Jackie Robinson. Robinson, the first African-American to play in the majors, entered the Hall of Fame in 1962. Major League Baseball has celebrated \u201cJackie Robinson Day\u201d on April 15th every year since 2004. With the lack of baseball in April this season, the league decided to celebrate it on August 28th.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The two will be connected forever. Boseman\u2019s portrayal of Robinson gives baseball fans one of the best historical baseball movies that have been made. Numerous groups will feel the sting of the loss of such a great actor. From the actors he worked alongside to the people whose lives he touched on-screen, Boseman will not soon be forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<br \/>\n<a id=\"GXkbFG1pR91pNjYtoCYsJg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/166202657\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'GXkbFG1pR91pNjYtoCYsJg',sig:'r3RdgCEypin4hY5zvl_DZF9SI4JFrKnMwiZsF0Q9s4g=',w:'594px',h:'512px',items:'166202657',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the day that Major League Baseball is celebrating Jackie Robinson and his legacy, the man who played Robinson in the critically-acclaimed biopic 42\u00a0has died. Chadwick Boseman was 43. The actor had been fighting colon cancer for four years, according to a statement released by his family.\u00a0 42 Actor Chadwick Boseman Dead at 43 pic.twitter.com\/aZ2JzDf5ai [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2165,"featured_media":37503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,2],"tags":[3455,4128,4124,856,4125,3934],"class_list":["post-37485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-featured","tag-baseball-movies","tag-black-panther","tag-chadwick-boseman","tag-jackie-robinson","tag-jackie-robinson-day","tag-mlb-2020"],"modified_by":"Evan Thompson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}