Michael Wright, Star of The Five Heartbeats and The Principal, Dies at 70
Michael Wright, the actor who played the fiery lead vocalist Eddie King Jr. in Robert Townsend's 1991 film The Five Heartbeats, has died at age 70.
Wright died in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Aug. 19, according to Variety. His wife, Susan Wright, announced his death in an Instagram post shared on the evening of Friday, Aug. 21. The cause was heart failure coupled with complications of Marchiafava-Bignami, a rare degenerative neurological disease.
Born on April 30, 1956, in New York City, Wright built a career that spanned more than 50 film and television credits. His breakthrough came with two very different roles: the 1979 gang drama The Wanderers, in which he appeared as part of a Bronx street gang, and the 1983 Robert Altman film Streamers, an ensemble piece set in an army barracks. TMM Both films put him on the map in quick succession and opened the door to a steady run of work across genres.
In The Five Heartbeats, Wright's Eddie King Jr. is the member of a fictional 1960s vocal group whose talent is matched and undone by his temper. The film, written and directed by Townsend, became a enduring favourite, and Wright's performance — the strut, the voice, the slow burn — stayed with audiences long after its theatrical run. He followed it with a turn as Victor Duncan, the antagonist in the 1987 comedy The Principal, opposite Jim Belushi and Louis Gossett Jr. TMZ
Wright's other film credits include Sugar Hill (1993), a Harlem crime drama starring Wesley Snipes. On television, he appeared in the 1980s science-fiction series V and in HBO's prison drama Oz, which ran from 1997 to 2003 and was one of the cable network's first hour-long scripted series.
For fans of The Five Heartbeats, Wright's death closes a chapter on a character who felt larger than the screen that held him. Eddie King Jr. was the kind of role that makes an actor impossible to forget, even when the credits roll on a career of more than fifty. Wright is survived by his wife, Susan.
