‘Heat Of The Night’ Actor Rollins Dies

Howard Rollins, the Oscar-nominated actor who was bounced from the TV series “In the Heat of the Night” in 1993 because of his drug use, has died at 46.

Rollins died Sunday afternoon at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York. The hospital declined to release circumstances of the death, but a publicist for actor Carroll O’Connor, Frank Tobin, said it was caused by complications from lymphoma.

In “The Heat of the Night,” Rollins starred opposite O’Connor as a black detective from Philadelphia working in a racially volatile Southern town.

Rollins also had roles in the movies “A Soldier’s Story” in 1984 and “Ragtime” in 1981. He was nominated for an Academy Award for “Ragtime,” in which he played Coalhouse Walker, a proud piano teacher who becomes a vengeful revolutionary.