Pulp Fiction and The Mask actor Peter Greene‘s cause of death has been revealed after he was found dead in his New York City apartment on Dec. 12.
The New York City Chief Medical Examiner ruled that Greene died of a “gunshot wound of left axilla with injury of brachial artery,” per a statement obtained by PEOPLE on Wednesday. The manner of death was determined an “accident.”
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Entertainment Weekly did not immediately hear back from the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
Greene’s manager, Gregg Edwards, confirmed his client’s death on Dec. 13 in a statement obtained by EW. No cause of death was disclosed at the time.
One of Greene’s neighbors requested a wellness check after they heard music playing in the actor’s apartment for over 24 hours, Edwards previously told NBC News. Greene was discovered dead in his Manhattan apartment as a result of the check that followed.
“Nobody played a bad guy better than Peter,” Edwards said of the actor. “But he also had, you know, a gentle side that most people never saw, and a heart as big as gold.”
Greene indeed played a string of legendary villains over the course of his three-decade career as an actor. From the menacing mobster Dorian Tyrell in The Mask to Zed, the security guard who along with his brother Maynard (Duane Whitaker) kidnaps and rapes Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) in Pulp Fiction, Greene’s flaring eyes and expressionless face proved perfectly suited to meaty antagonist roles.
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But his range extended far beyond baddies. He portrayed several detectives and lawmen, as in the gritty Denzel Washington drama Training Day and in the improvisational Heather Graham-Justine Bateman two-hander Kiss & Tell. He played a priest in the underworld thriller Final Engagement, an alien in the sci-fi film Earthling, and even appeared as a bank robber in the music video for Jadakiss’ 2019 single “Me.”
Greene revealed in an interview with Sissy Gamache that he originally balked at the part Quentin Tarantino offered him in Pulp Fiction because it was too “brutal.” He ultimately asked the director to “improvise the scene because the way it was written was just brutal, I mean you can imagine,” and Tarantino was “good to his word,” allowing Greene to make one of his signature characters his own.