#Tony Award winner Brent Carver dead at 68

Brent Carver, the Broadway actor who won a Tony Award for his leading turn in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” died this week, his family said in a statement Thursday. He was 68.

“Our family is sharing news of Brent Carver’s passing on Aug. 4 at home in Cranbrook, BC, his birthplace and favorite place on Earth,” the statement said. “His love of performing was matched only by his zest for life and lifetime devotion to family, friends and treasured pets.”

Although Carver acted around the US and Canada since the 1970s, the Canadian actor made waves on Broadway in the ’90s appearing in oddball musicals with tough topics.

In John Kander and Fred Ebb’s “Spider Woman,” the sinewy actor played a gay window dresser imprisoned in Argentina, and in “Parade” he took on the role of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched in Georgia in 1915.

Having also performed in many Shakespeare plays with Canada’s Stratford Festival, Carver’s last major New York role was as Friar Lawrence in “Romeo and Juliet,” starring Orlando Bloom.