cause

The cause of death for Peter Greene, a character actor known for playing villains in movies including “Pulp Fiction” and “The Mask,” has been revealed by New York City’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

Police found Greene, 60, dead in his apartment Dec. 12. They didn’t suspect foul play.

His death was ruled an accident, the M.E.’s office said via email. Greene died from a “gunshot wound of left axilla with injury of brachial artery,” the office said. In everyday English, that means he shot himself in his left underarm and injured a significant artery that starts in the shoulder and runs down to the elbow crease.

Police found the character actor in his Lower East Side apartment, Deadline reported, after neighbors heard Christmas music playing for days and one of them called authorities and the landlord for a wellness check.

Greene had a history of addiction, per the New York Post, and attempted suicide in the 1990s. He was scheduled to go in for a procedure to remove a benign tumor near his lung on the day he was found, the outlet said. His manager had talked to him two days before he was found.

“He sounded OK … It was just a totally normal conversation. He was a little nervous about the operation going in, but he said it wasn’t super serious,” manager Gregg Edwards told the Post in December. “He was talking about that and hoping that I was going to be OK and wishing me well as I was wishing him well. We’re good friends. I love the guy.”

Greene’s best-known role was the villain Zed, who was brought in to torture Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames’ characters in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 classic “Pulp Fiction.” In “The Mask,” also released in 1994, he played mobster Dorian Tyrell, antagonist to Jim Carrey’s Stanley Ipkiss, a.k.a. the Mask.

Those roles came only a couple of years into Greene’s career, which per IMDb included nearly 100 TV and film credits from 1990 to 2026. His TV credits included episodes of “Chicago P.D.,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “Law & Order,” “Justified” and more.

He started out with parts in a couple of TV shows in the early 1990s before landing the lead role in “Laws of Gravity.” In 1995, Times movie critic Kenneth Turan called the 1992 film “independent American filmmaking at its best” and described Jimmy (Greene) as “a small-time street outlaw who, though horrified at the thought of actual work, is stable by local standards” in Brooklyn’s then crime-ridden Greenpoint neighborhood.

The New Jersey native, born Oct. 8, 1965, studied Method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York City when he was in his 20s. He told Premiere magazine in 1996 that he ran away from home at age 15 and lived on the streets, using and dealing drugs and hiding from other dealers in theaters, where he got into acting. His drug use overlapped with his early success on screen.

After a 1996 suicide attempt, the actor said, he got treatment for addiction and sobered up.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The cause of death for Victoria Jones, the daughter of Hollywood legend Tommy Lee Jones, has been revealed a month and a half after she was found dead in a hotel in San Francisco on New Year’s Day.

The San Francisco medical examiner released a report Tuesday ruling her death accidental, the result of the toxic effects of cocaine. The 34-year-old was discovered dead at the Fairmont San Francisco in the early hours of Jan. 1.

San Francisco police responded to a call at 3:14 a.m. regarding a report of a deceased person at the hotel. Officers met with medics at the scene who declared an adult female dead.

Jones briefly pursued acting, making a cameo alongside her father in “Men in Black II” (2002) and later appearing in “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005), which was directed by her father. She later largely remained out of the spotlight and struggled with substance abuse.

In August 2023, her father petitioned that she be placed under temporary conservatorship, according to Marin County court records.

At the time of the filing, she was under a 14-day involuntary psychiatric hold at a hospital in the community of Greenbrae, and her father wanted her to be transferred to a rehabilitation facility, according to a copy of the petition acquired by the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The proposed conservatee needs to recover and work towards sobriety,” the petition stated. “For these reasons, the proposed conservatee will suffer irreparable harm if her residence is not changed from a hospital to a rehab facility.”

Margaret Caron Schmierer was granted temporary conservatorship over Jones in August 2023. Jones retained an attorney and fought the conservatorship.

Then, in December 2023, Tommy Lee Jones filed a petition for the convervatorship to be terminated, which was granted, court records show.

In 2025, Jones was arrested twice in Napa County.

She was charged with three misdemeanor counts — being under the influence of a controlled substance, possession of a narcotic and obstruction of a peace officer — from an incident on April 26. She was later charged with misdemeanor domestic battery from an incident on June 13, court records show. She pleaded not guilty to all charges and the cases remained open at the time of her death.

Jones was the daughter of Tommy Lee and ex-wife Kimberlea Cloughley. She is also survived by her older brother, Austin Jones.

Tommy Lee Jones is known for his Academy Award-winning role as U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard in “The Fugitive” (1993) alongside other iconic roles such as Agent K in “Men in Black” (1997) and as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in “No Country for Old Men” (2007).

Staff writer Tracy Brown contributed to this report

Billy Steinberg, who wrote the lyrics to some of the biggest pop hits of the 1980s — including Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” and Heart’s “Alone” — died Monday at his home in Brentwood. He was 75.

His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Laurie Soriano, who said the cause was cancer.

A master of the melodramatic power ballad, Steinberg wrote vividly about the experience of being overwhelmed by love. In “Like a Virgin,” the narrator sings of having been lost in the wilderness — “I was beat, incomplete / I’d been had, I was sad and blue” — only to meet someone who makes the singer feel “shiny and new.” In “Alone,” the narrator lies in a dark room late at night, listening to the clock tick as they ponder an unconfessed infatuation.

“Like a Virgin,” which Steinberg co-wrote with his frequent creative partner Tom Kelly, spent six weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 in late 1984 and early 1985. With Kelly, Steinberg went on to score four more No. 1s on the Hot 100: “True Colors,” “Alone,” Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional” and the Bangles’ “Eternal Flame.”

Among the other hits he wrote were the Pretenders’ “I’ll Stand by You,” the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself,” and “I Drove All Night,” which was recorded by both Lauper and Roy Orbison.

Born in Fresno in 1950, Steinberg moved as a child with his family to Palm Springs, where his father had a business growing table grapes in the Coachella Valley. He started writing songs while studying literature at Bard College in the late ’60s. Yet after his junior year he began having severe anxiety attacks and dropped out of school, as he wrote in a 2004 essay posted on his website. He moved home to Palm Springs and worked on his dad’s vineyards, writing lyrics as he drove around in a red Ford pickup truck.

In the late ’70s, Steinberg formed a new wave band called Billy Thermal — the name pointed to the Coachella Valley town where the vineyards were located — that eventually got signed to the producer Richard Perry’s Planet Records. Billy Thermal made an album that went unreleased, though Linda Ronstadt and Pat Benatar recorded several of the band’s songs; Ronstadt’s version of “How Do I Make You,” from her “Mad Love” LP, hit No. 10 on the Hot 100 in early 1980.

After Billy Thermal broke up, Steinberg formed a group called i-Ten with Kelly, whom he’d met at a party thrown by Fleetwood Mac’s onetime producer, Keith Olsen. The duo released an album in 1983 that featured an early version of “Alone.”

Steinberg won a Grammy Award in 1997 for his work on Celine Dion’s “Falling Into You,” which was named album of the year. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011. His survivors include his wife, Trina, and his sons Ezra and Max.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Austin Beutner’s daughter was found by the side of a highway in Palmdale the night she died, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

A passerby alerted authorities to a woman in a “state of medical distress” shortly after midnight Jan. 6 near Sierra Highway and Technology Drive, said Lt. Michael Modica of the sheriff’s homicide bureau.

Sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene to assist paramedics, who treated Emily Beutner, 22, at the scene, Modica said. He could not say how long Beutner had been by the road, which is surrounded by empty fields.

She was transported to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Sheriff’s homicide detectives have assumed control of the death investigation. Modica said this is typical when a young person is found in such a situation and should not be taken as an indication of the cause of death, which will be determined by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.

Jeff Millman, a spokesperson for Austin Beutner, declined to comment.

Viridiana Aguilar, a spokesperson for the medical examiner, said earlier this month that her agency had not yet made a determination on the cause of death and had requested additional testing.

“Due to the ongoing death investigation, the County of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner cannot disclose what testing and/or studies were requested,” Aguilar said. “Deferred cases can take a few months before a cause of death is determined.”

The medical examiner’s website indicates that Emily Beutner died at a hospital and does not list a cause or manner of death.

Beutner, a student at Loyola Marymount University, was the youngest of four children and the only daughter.

Her father, a former Los Angeles Unified school superintendent, is among the challengers seeking to unseat Mayor Karen Bass in the June 2 primary. Others include TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the Palisades fire, and Rae Huang, a community organizer and housing advocate.

Austin Beutner has sharply criticized Bass’ handling of the fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead. His own home was seriously damaged in the fire, forcing him to live elsewhere for the past year, and his mother-in-law’s home was destroyed.

Over the course of his career, Beutner did a stint as former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s “jobs czar.” He also spent roughly a year as publisher and chief executive of The Times.

Beutner has not publicly campaigned since Jan. 5, the day before his daughter’s death.

“My family has experienced the unimaginable loss of our beloved daughter. We ask for privacy and your prayers at this time,” Beutner said earlier this month.