In the dim, cluttered confines of a modest apartment on Clinton Street in New York City’s Lower East Side, a scene unfolded on December 12, 2025, that would send ripples of disbelief through Hollywood and beyond. Peter Greene, the brooding character actor whose piercing gaze and gravelly voice etched unforgettable villains into the cultural psyche, was discovered lifeless on the floor of his home. At just 60 years old, the man who terrorized audiences as the sadistic Zed in Pulp Fiction and the ruthless Dorian Tyrell in The Mask met an end as enigmatic and haunting as the roles that defined him. But it wasn’t just the suddenness of his passing that gripped the city – it was the gruesome details: Greene lying facedown, surrounded by blood, a facial injury marring his features, and nearby, a crumpled piece of paper bearing a cryptic handwritten message. “I’m still a Westie,” it read, a phrase that evoked ghosts from New York’s gritty underworld and ignited a firestorm of chilling speculation.

The call came in around 3:25 p.m., prompted by a concerned neighbor who had noticed something amiss. For over 24 hours, the faint strains of music – an eclectic mix of old rock anthems and jazz standards, Greene’s rumored late-night soundtrack – had pulsed from behind his door. It wasn’t unusual for the reclusive actor to lose himself in solitude, but the unrelenting volume set off alarms. When building management finally entered, they found Greene unresponsive, his body sprawled in a pool of his own blood. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. No signs of forced entry, no struggle evident in the tidy chaos of scripts, vinyl records, and half-empty coffee mugs that cluttered the space. Yet the image seared into the minds of first responders: the once-imposing figure of a man who commanded screens now reduced to vulnerability on a worn hardwood floor.

What elevated this tragedy from heartbreaking to downright eerie was that note. Scrawled in Greene’s unmistakable jagged script – the same hand that had autographed headshots for adoring fans – it lay just inches from his body, as if placed there in a final act of defiance or farewell. “I’m still a Westie.” To those unfamiliar with the lore of New York’s criminal underbelly, the words might seem innocuous, a quirky nod to heritage. But for anyone versed in the city’s shadowed history, they carried the weight of a confession, a boast, or perhaps a lament. The Westies were no myth; they were a notorious Irish-American gang that ruled Hell’s Kitchen in the 1970s and ’80s with an iron fist wrapped in Celtic pride. Led by figures like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone, they were synonymous with extortion, drug trafficking, and brutal turf wars – a world of switchblades and loyalty oaths that bled into the very streets Greene once called home.

Greene’s connection to that era wasn’t mere fancy. Born Peter Michael Greene on October 31, 1965, in the quiet suburb of Montclair, New Jersey, his life veered into darkness early. At 15, a turbulent home life – marked by an absent father and a mother struggling to hold the family together – drove him to the streets of Manhattan. He landed in Hell’s Kitchen, that cauldron of immigrant dreams and nightmares, where the Westies held sway. As a teenage runaway, Greene scraped by on odd jobs, petty hustles, and the occasional brush with the law. He later admitted in rare interviews that drugs became his escape – heroin, cocaine, the numbing haze that blurred the line between survival and self-destruction. “I was a kid playing at being a man in a world that ate boys alive,” he once reflected, his voice a low rumble that mirrored the menace he brought to his roles.

By his early 20s, Greene had clawed his way into acting, channeling that raw street edge into auditions that caught the eye of indie directors. His breakout came in 1992’s Laws of Gravity, a gritty Sundance darling where he played a volatile criminal with a vulnerability that hinted at the actor’s own scars. But 1994 was the year that immortalized him. Quentin Tarantino cast him as Zed in Pulp Fiction, the gimp-masked rapist whose brief but brutal appearance in the film’s infamous basement scene left audiences recoiling. “Say ‘what’ again!” – no, that was Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules, but Greene’s Zed embodied the quiet terror that lurked in Tarantino’s nonlinear fever dream. Critics raved about his intensity; audiences remembered the chill.

That same year, he stole scenes in The Mask as Dorian Tyrell, the club-owning mobster whose showdown with Jim Carrey’s zany Stanley Ipkiss became a box-office smash. Greene’s Tyrell wasn’t cartoonish villainy; he was a powder keg of pent-up rage, his eyes burning with the authenticity of someone who’d stared down real demons. “Arguably his best role,” his longtime manager Gregg Edwards would later say, voice cracking with emotion. Edwards, who had repped Greene for over a decade, recalled their last conversation just days before the discovery – a casual check-in about an upcoming indie thriller called Mascots, where Greene was set to reunite onscreen with Mickey Rourke. “He sounded good, excited even. We never expected this.”

Greene’s career was a tapestry of supporting turns in over 90 films and countless TV spots, a testament to his chameleon-like ability to vanish into the shadows of someone else’s story. In Training Day (2001), he was a crooked cop slithering through Denzel Washington’s orbit; in Blue Streak (1999), a sly fence trading barbs with Martin Lawrence. He popped up in Sleepers (1996) as a menacing priest and lent gravity to indie fare like Clean, Shaven (1993), where his portrayal of a schizophrenic father earned festival buzz. Television beckoned too – arcs on The X-Files, Law & Order, and a memorable stint as a haunted detective in Nip/Tuck. Yet for all his credits, Greene remained Hollywood’s best-kept secret, the guy who elevated every frame he inhabited without chasing the spotlight. “I don’t do fame,” he’d grunt in interviews. “I do truth.”

Off-screen, that truth was a battleground. Greene’s street days caught up with him in the mid-90s, culminating in a suicide attempt in March 1996 that nearly ended it all. Hospitalized and humbled, he entered rehab, emerging with a fierce commitment to sobriety that lasted years. He mentored young actors in New York workshops, sharing war stories not as glory tales but cautionary fables. “The streets don’t let go easy,” he’d warn, his Montclair accent thickening with memory. By 2025, he was a father to 16-year-old Ryder, a sharp-witted teen with his dad’s brooding eyes and a passion for skateboarding. Neighbors in the Lower East Side building described Greene as the quiet anchor of the floor – always good for a nod in the hallway, a shared cigarette on the fire escape, or a gruff laugh at a bad joke. “He’d talk about Ryder nonstop,” one tenant recalled. “Said the kid was his redemption.”

So why the note? Why invoke the Westies now, in the solitude of his final moments? Theories swirled almost immediately, fueled by the bloodied scene and Greene’s history. Had old ghosts resurfaced? Was it a nod to his roots, a proud declaration of the unyielding Irish fire that shaped him? Or something darker – a cry for help scrawled in delirium, perhaps tied to the facial injury that suggested a fall, a seizure, or worse? Police were quick to tamp down suspicions of foul play; the apartment showed no evidence of intruders, and Greene’s circle reported no threats. An autopsy was underway, with the medical examiner’s office promising answers soon. Initial whispers pointed to natural causes – heart issues, long-term effects of his past addictions – but the positioned note gnawed at investigators. Was it suicide? Accidental overdose? Or simply a man’s way of signing off on a life lived loud and unapologetic?

The outpouring of grief was swift and visceral, a digital wake that trended worldwide within hours. On social media, fans unearthed clips of his scenes, captioning them with broken hearts: “Zed’s stare still haunts me. RIP to a legend who made evil feel real.” Tarantino himself posted a rare tribute, a black-and-white still from Pulp Fiction overlaid with the words, “Peter brought the nightmare to life. The world’s dimmer without his edge.” Jim Carrey, ever the wordsmith, shared a memory from the Mask set: “He terrified me on camera, but off it, he was the guy slipping me tips on how to loosen up. A gentle soul in a storm of a man.” Rourke, his would-be Mascots co-star, was more terse: “Brother, you were the real deal. See you on the other side.”

Edwards, speaking through tears to reporters outside the apartment building, painted a portrait of a man reclaiming his narrative. “Peter had demons, sure, but he’d slayed most of ’em. He was clean, focused on Ryder, excited about this film. This… this doesn’t add up.” Friends echoed the sentiment, reminiscing about poker nights where Greene’s deadpan humor cut through the smoke, or walks along the East River where he’d muse on the absurdity of it all. “He’d say, ‘Life’s a bad script – you just improvise the good parts,’” one pal shared. Even in death, Greene’s authenticity shone; no polished eulogies, just raw acknowledgment of a life forged in fire.

As the sun set on that fateful Friday, turning the Lower East Side’s graffiti-strewn alleys golden, the neighborhood gathered in quiet vigil. Candles flickered on the stoop, a makeshift altar of flowers and faded headshots. Whispers turned to the Westies – was Greene, in his last breath, reclaiming the badge of a youth he’d outrun? Or was it a riddle, a final twist worthy of his Tarantino-esque legacy? The autopsy loomed like a cliffhanger, promising clarity amid the chaos. But for those who knew him, the real questions weren’t about how he died, but how he’d lived: fiercely, flawed, and forever etched in the grainy glow of cinema.

Peter Greene’s story wasn’t one of red carpets and roar; it was the underbelly tale of a survivor who turned pain into performance. From Hell’s Kitchen’s mean streets to Hollywood’s velvet ropes, he navigated both with the same steely resolve. The note, that enigmatic “I’m still a Westie,” stands as his epitaph – a reminder that some loyalties, some scars, endure. In a town that chews up dreamers, Greene didn’t just endure; he defined the darkness. At 60, his curtain fell too soon, leaving us to wonder: What unfinished scenes did he leave behind? And in the quiet of his apartment, as the music finally silenced, did he find the peace that eluded him in life?