William Lucking’s wife, Sigrid Insull Lucking, is speaking out following her husband’s death. Lucking passed away at the age of 80 on Monday, Oct. 18 at his home in Las Vegas. While no cause of death has been released, according to his wife, the actor “just gave up. He was tired and in a lot of pain” following a decades-long career in Hollywood that often saw him portraying the tough guy and stuntman, roles that took a massive toll on his overall health in the latter years of his life.
Sigrid broke her silence on her husband’s passing to TMZ just days after she confirmed via an obituary shared to Facebook that Lucking had died. The actor had been well known for his portrayal of old-school biker Piney Winston on the FX drama series Sons of Anarchy, and had held a number of other notable roles throughout his career. Sigrid said that the nature of those rough and tumble rolls led to numerous injuries, with Lucking having suffered numerous broken bones. Sigrid revealed that her husband even once landed himself in a full body cast for several weeks after he fell 80 feet off a bridge in a motorcycle accident while filming Harold and Maude.
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The numerous on-set injuries required numerous medical procedures, with Lucking eventually undergoing two knee replacements, back surgery, and shoulder surgery, as well as other operations. As a result of the injuries and surgeries, Sigrid said her husband was left in pain and spent the final years of his life in a wheelchair. He also experienced breathing problems and his heart was failing. Sigrid said Lucking “just gave up. He was tired and in a lot of pain.”
Lucking passed away as his Las Vegas home on Monday, Oct. 18 surrounded by loved ones, it was confirmed on Nov. 4. His obituary in part read, “although William often played tough and strong men, in his actual life he was an elegant man with a brilliant intellect who loved to argue about politics and current affairs, discuss philosophy and physics, and assert fine-pointed opinions about art and poetry. He was a giant of a man with the soul of a poet, one who “contained…a tension of sorts within his being…like a boulder teetering on a hill…or a balloon expanding towards its extreme,” as one friend put it.”
In addition to his role on SOA, Lucking’s other credits included Mission Impossible, Lancer, The Virginian, The Partridge Family, Oklahoma Crude, and Outlaws, among several others. He is survived by his wife, daughters Marjet Lucking and Juliana Ryan, grandchildren, and his sister.