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PASSINGS: Mikey Welsh, Doris Belack, Diane Cilento

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Mikey Welsh

Former bass player with rock band Weezer

Mikey Welsh, 40, the former bass player for the alternative rock band Weezer, was found dead in a Chicago hotel room Saturday, police said.

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Chicago police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said employees of the Raffaello Hotel found Welsh unconscious and not breathing when they entered his room after he failed to check out. Kubiak said no signs of foul play were evident. Autopsy results are pending.

Welsh, of Burlington, Vt., performed with Weezer from 1998 to 2001 and played on the bestselling “Green Album.” He left after suffering a nervous breakdown, according to the band’s website. He eventually established himself in a second career as a painter.

“I’m taking a break from music,” he told MetroWest Daily News in 2002. “I really feel the need to reinvent myself and move on, and I couldn’t be happier painting. Music is still an important part of my life, but I really have no desire to actually play it.”

Weezer posted a message on its website, saying Welsh’s time with the band was “vital, essential, wild, and amazing.”

The band, which was formed in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, was on hiatus when Welsh began playing with frontman Rivers Cuomo in a group known informally as the Rivers Cuomo Band. He was offered a permanent slot in Weezer after bassist Matt Sharp left in 1998. He made his live debut with the band in 2000.

Welsh had planned to attend Weezer’s Sunday performance at Riot Fest in Chicago. In an eerie Twitter message dated Sept. 26, he wrote, “dreamt I died in chicago next weekend (heart attack in my sleep). need to write my will today.”

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Doris Belack

Veteran character actress was in ‘Tootsie’

Doris Belack, 85, a veteran character actress who had numerous roles in theater, television and film, perhaps most notably as the soap opera producer in “Tootsie,” died Oct. 4 in New York City, family friend Jason Watkins confirmed. The cause was not given.

Belack’s husband of 65 years, Philip Rose, a prominent theatrical producer who brought “A Raisin in the Sun” to the stage, died in May.

Besides “Tootsie,” Belack also appeared in “Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult,” “What About Bob?,” “Opportunity Knocks” and other films. In “Tootsie,” the 1982 Sydney Pollack comedy starring Dustin Hoffman, Belack’s Rita Marshall has a firm grip on the fictional daytime drama “Southwest General.”

Earlier in her career, Belack played Anna Woleck Craig on the ABC daytime drama “One Life to Live” from the late 1960s to the late ‘70s. More recently, on prime-time television she had a recurring role as Judge Margaret Barry on “Law & Order.” She also played police Capt. Florence Baker on the 1982 series “Baker’s Dozen,” Fish’s wife, Bernice, on “Barney Miller” and many guest spots on such series as “Remington Steele,” “The Golden Girls,” “Ellen” and “Sex and the City.”

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“I never had any desire to be a star,” Belack, who also actively worked in theater, told Back Stage in 2002. “My goal was always to be a journeyman. And audience size does not have any bearing on the roles I’ve most enjoyed doing.”

Born Feb. 26, 1926, in New York, Belack started acting in summer stock after high school.

Diane Cilento

Australian actress Oscar-nominated for ‘Tom Jones’

Diane Cilento, 78, an Australian actress who received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress for her work in the 1963 film “Tom Jones,” died Thursday in northern Australia, Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh announced. No cause was given.

Cilento, a veteran of dozens of films, television shows and stage productions, was married to “James Bond” actor Sean Connery from 1962 until 1973, when they divorced.

The Queensland-born actress rose to fame in the 1950s and ‘60s, starring alongside screen legends Charlton Heston in “The Agony and the Ecstasy” (1965) and Paul Newman in “Hombre” (1967). She appeared opposite Albert Finney in Tony Richardson’s film adaptation of Henry Fielding’s novel “Tom Jones.”

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Cilento was nominated for a Tony Award in 1956 for her portrayal of Helen of Troy in the play “Tiger at the Gates.”

In 1985, she married playwright Anthony Shaffer, who wrote the screenplay for “The Wicker Man,” a 1973 horror film she starred in.

Times staff and wire reports

news.obits@latimes.com

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