Celebrity 'Deadwood' Actor Powers Boothe Died of a Heart Attack As He Battled Cancer Powers Boothe suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest on May 14. By Ale Russian Ale Russian Ale Russian is a contributing writer at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2023. Her work has appeared in Women's World, First For Women, Biography.com and the Chicago Sun-Times. People Editorial Guidelines Published on May 30, 2017 04:04PM EDT Deadwood actor Powers Boothe died of a heart attack, according to his death certificate obtained by TMZ. The Emmy award winning actor suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest on May 14 after battling pancreatic cancer for the past 6 months. The certificate names his wife, Pamela, as his surviving relative and informant. Boothe was buried in a private service in his home state of Texas. He was born and raised in the small town of Snyder (population: 11,000, give or take), where he was the youngest of three sons to a sharecropper farmer. In west Texas, he saw a future in either oil or farming, and opted instead to go to college – becoming the first person in his family to do so. Boothe made his national breakthrough in 1980 starring as a true-life demagogue and cult-leader in the CBS docudrama Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones. He went on to star in films like Red Dawn, Sin City and The Avengers, as well as TV shows like HBO’s Deadwood. His death first broke online through longtime friend Beau Bridges, who tweeted: “It’s with great sadness that I mourn the passing of my friend Powers Boothe. A dear friend, great actor, devoted father & husband.”