Actor Raphael Coleman — known for his role as Eric Brown in the 2005 film Nanny McPhee — suddenly passed away on Friday, February 7 as confirmed by his mom, Liz Jensen, on Twitter.
“Rest in peace my beloved son Raphael Coleman, aka Iggy Fox,” she wrote. “He died doing what he loved, working for the noblest cause of all. His family could not be prouder. Let’s celebrate all he achieved in his short life and cherish his legacy.”
In a lengthy Facebook tribute, the 25-year-old’s stepdad Carsten Jensen said that he had “collapsed without prior health problems.”
“I guess there’s nothing that makes you see death as unfair and meaningless as when a young person dies. It’s life itself that’s sabotaged,” he wrote. “It just happened to my wife, Liz, whose youngest son, Raph of only 25, died last Friday. He collapsed without prior health problems in the middle of a trip and could not be restored. I got to know Raph when he was six years old, and we were so close.”
Carsten continued, “I will never forget you, we say in a farewell greeting to the dead. 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.”
After his starring role in Nanny McPhee, Raphael went on to star in films like It’s Alive, Edward’s Turmoil and The Fourth Kind. In 2010, he won an award for Best Young Actor at the British Independent Film Festival. Eventually, Raphael decided to step out of the spotlight and at the age of 18 he traveled to Thailand and became a biologist. At the time of his death, he ran the social media accounts for Extinction Rebellion — an environmental movement.
Raphael’s stepdad remembered him as “one of the first and most active members” in the group and said he will remember him as “a light beam that lives forever in young people.”
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