Climate change activist and former actor Raphael Coleman, who starred in Nanny McPhee as Eric in 2005, died suddenly on Friday at the age of 25.
Coleman’s mother and stepfather shared the news on social media over the weekend.
“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,” his mom, Liz Jensen, tweeted.
Jensen attached a link to the website for Extinction Rebellion, which is an international climate change movement.
The article said Coleman, also known as Iggy Fox, was recently arrested at London’s Brazilian Embassy after joining an environmental protest calling for an end to “an ecological and human rights emergency.”
“I’m rebelling in love for this world and the wild. In compassion for the Indigenous, local and First Nations peoples who are persecuted protecting the ecosystems we all need to survive. In rage for the environmental defenders murdered every week — my siblings in the fight for life,” Coleman wrote in the article.
Coleman’s stepfather, Carsten Jensen, also penned an emotional Facebook post.
“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. It just happened to my wife, Liz, whose youngest son, Raph of only 25, died last Friday,” Carsten wrote.
“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,” he said.
“I will never forget you, we say in a farewell greeting to the dead. But when it’s your own child, it’s your genes, your whole body, something greater than the word I who forever refuse to accept the judgment of death,” Carsten continued. “Raph wasn’t my child, even though I was close to him. But I can feel it myself. I see it in his mother’s eyes, and I hear it in her voice, the irreversible loss of the most precious thing in life.”
Coleman was best known for his role as Eric Brown in Nanny McPhee at the age of 11. He also appeared in It’s Alive and The Fourth Kind in 2009.
According to his stepfather, Coleman could have continued with his acting career but decided to “save the planet” instead.
“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,” Carsten wrote. “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. 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.”
Many people took to Twitter to share their condolences once news of Coleman’s passing spread.
His cause of death has yet to be revealed.
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