Mike Schank, actor in cult favorite ‘American Movie,’ dead at 56
MIKE SCHANK, actor in cult favorite ‘American Movie,’ dead at 56
Actor and director Mike Schank had been ill for some time but seemed to have dodged a terminal diagnosis.
On Dec. 10, the actor was found unresponsive in a Brooklyn apartment with a pill bottle nearby and a pill in his right hand.
His family and closest friends struggled to grasp what had happened until his body was discovered two days later.
“My friends and I were trying to figure out what we should do or how we should handle the news,” said his wife, Susan. “There was no word from the doctors.”
But, after speaking with Mike’s older daughter, Danielle, after a couple of days, the family decided to tell him that he was gone.
But they had to watch over him to make sure he didn’t die in their apartment.
“It’s a weird and sad one,” Danielle said of her father’s final days. “But at least he had that last little bit of life.”
She said her dad had been struggling with cancer, with which he had been diagnosed in 2008, but they did not know how long he had to live. While cancer struck him in several different areas, it started to spread to his liver.
“He was never sick, he was always busy,” Susan told the New York Daily News.
Mike was first noticed when he took a break from filming “The Green Mile,” a film he co-wrote and starred in, and started acting up.
“He had no symptoms, a lot of people are very sensitive to the word,” Susan said. “It’s hard to explain, but if you have a chronic disease, you can go one day and go the next day and not know where you are.”
Mike’s wife said she had known about