According to his stepfather writer Carsten Jensen, Nanny McPhee star Raphael Coleman had experienced no recent health issues before his death on February 6.
Coleman died at age 25 after he collapsed while jogging and could not be revived.
Up until recently, the actor-turned-scientist had disappeared from the spotlight after acting in the children’s film Nanny McPhee. He had gone onto dedicate his life to environmental conservation.
Jensen posted about Coleman in a touching eulogy to the late actor on social media.
Jensen wrote on his Facebook page, “To die young”
“I guess there’s nothing that makes you see death as unfair and meaningless as when a young person dies. It’s life itself that’s sabotaged,” he continued. “It just happened to my wife, Liz, whose youngest son, Raph of only 25, died last Friday. He collapsed without prior health problems in the middle of a trip and could not be restored. I got to know raph when he was six years old, and we were so close.”
“Dear friends, readers and followers. I’ve never wanted to use this Facebook page for private purposes,” Jensen continued in the note. “This is where I try to inform myself in a chaotic world, analyse and explain my positions.”
He added, “But when I choose to tell you about the death of my father, it’s not just because the loss of him will bring me forever. This is also because I see in him the hope that a new youth in the middle of the climate crisis has lit up in us.”
“When I think of Raph, I see something that will never die, a blunt of eternity, a light beam that lives forever in young people.,” he wrote about his beloved stepson. “We believe that it is us, the older generations who have something to give the young people. We believe that we are the ones who pass the baton of life to them.”
He continued, “But I think it’s the other way around. The young people remind us why we’re alive. They remind us of the purpose of life that this is the gift we must not in distraction until we have unpacked it.”
Extinction Rebellion, an activist group Coleman worked closely with, shared a message from his mother Liz Jensen on their Facebook page.
“You were a force of nature, and now you are a new kind of force: you are atoms of chlorophyll, you are water, you are an ants nest, you are moss on a stone, a birds feather, a wolf’s paw print, a tiger, a tree, a praying mantis, a stingray, a squirrel,” Jensen wrote. “You are the sky and the sea and the forests and the mountains and the marshes and the deserts and everything in between. With your scientist’s and your writer’s eye, I think that’s how you’d see it.”
“You didn’t believe in heaven because you knew heaven was here on Earth,” Jensen continued. “You saw it clearly and you helped others see it. It’s all here. All we could ever wish for or need us is all around us. I feel my life is over because your life – your physical life, your life in that multiply tattooed and apparently healthy young body – is over. But you wouldn’t want me or anyone else to think that.”
Jensen announced on Twitter.
Rest in peace my beloved son Raphael Coleman, aka Iggy Fox. He died doing what he loved, working for the noblest cause of all. His family could not be prouder. Let’s celebrate all he achieved in his short life and cherish his legacy https://t.co/qFRKPT7rRG
— Liz Jensen (@LizJensenWriter) February 7, 2020
On February 7, The Hourglass newspaper published an op-ed Coleman had written before his untimely death.
“I don’t want to go to prison, but I’ll face whatever I need to,” Coleman wrote. “My actions aren’t about sacrifice, or arrest for the sake of it. Knowing the science, I have no choice but to tell the truth, and stick to my morals in the face of that truth. I won’t stand by and watch the world burn.”
In recent years, Coleman had given up acting to study science and take on environmental causes, Jensen revealed that Coleman has recently been arrested for painting the Brazilian Embassy in London as a protest of the Amazon Rainforest fires.
