Raphael Coleman, a former child actor who starred in the 2005 family movie Nanny McPhee, died suddenly on Thursday. His stepfather, Cartsen Jensen, said on Facebook that Coleman died after collapsing while jogging. He was 25 years old.
Jensen announced Coleman’s death on Saturday. According to his Facebook statement, Coleman had no known prior health problems.
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“I will never forget you, we say in a farewell greeting to the dead,” Jensen wrote in Danish. “But when it’s your own child, it’s your genes, your whole body, something greater than the word I who forever refuse to accept the judgment of death. Raph wasn’t my child, even though I was close to him. But I can feel it myself. I see it in his mother’s eyes, and I hear it in her voice, the irreversible loss of the most precious thing in life.”
Coleman’s mother Liz also shared the news on Twitter, reports The Mirror. Extinction Rebellion, an activist group Coleman spent part of his last years with, shared the note on their Facebook page. Coleman earned the nickname “Iggy Fox” in the group.
“You were a force of nature, and now you are a new kind of force: you are atoms of chlorophyll, you are water, you are an ants nest, you are moss on a stone, a birds feather, a wolf’s paw print, a tiger, a tree, a praying mantis, a stingray, a squirrel,” Liz wrote. “You are the sky and the sea and the forests and the mountains and the marshes and the deserts and everything in between. With your scientist’s and your writer’s eye, I think that’s how you’d see it.”
“You didn’t believe in heaven because you knew heaven was here on Earth,” Liz continued. “You saw it clearly and you helped others see it. It’s all here. All we could ever wish for or need us is all around us. I feel my life is over because your life – your physical life, your life in that multiply tattooed and apparently healthy young body – is over. But you wouldn’t want me or anyone else to think that.”
Coleman made his film debut as Eric Brown in Nanny McPhee, which starred Emma Thompson in the title role. In 2009, he starred in the films It’s Alice, Edward’s Turmoil and The Fourth Kind. In 2010, he won acting awards at the British Independent Film Festival and Brussels Shot Film Festival.
In recent years, Coleman focused on climate activism. According to Jensen, he led the Extinction Rebellion and was arrested for painting the Brazilian Embassy red during the Amazon Rainforest fires.
“There’s a video of the arrest. Two giant cops are taking Ralph away with serious faces. Raph’s smiling,” Jensen wrote. “There is an inequality over his smile, no cheap triumph, just a knowledge that he is doing the right thing. It’s this smile that’s the gift for us. There is an expectation in the faces of young people, a sun in their eyes, a vital idealism that we must not betray. That’s all… Raph was.”
Photo credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
