The Wire star Michael K Williams found dead

The American actor Michael K Williams, best known for starring in the HBO hit drama series The Wire, has been found dead in his New York apartment. He was 54.

US media quote law-enforcement sources as saying he died from a suspected drug overdose. This has not been confirmed officially.

Williams – who was nominated for three Emmy Awards – had openly discussed his struggles with drugs over the years.

In The Wire he was Omar Little, a gay, streetwise robber of drug gangs.

He was also known for playing the powerful gangster Albert “Chalky” White in the Prohibition period TV series Boardwalk Empire.

A spokesman for the New York Police Department said officers went to Williams’s Brooklyn apartment after receiving an emergency call at 2pm local time on Monday (6pm GMT).

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Fellow actors and film-makers have been paying tribute on social media.

“The depth of my love for this brother, can only be matched by the depth of my pain learning of his loss,” Williams’s Wire co-star Wendell Pierce tweeted.

“An immensely talented man with the ability to give voice to the human condition, portraying the lives of those whose humanity is seldom elevated until he sings their truth,” Pierce added.

“If he was in a scene he was the best thing about it. Period,” wrote the actor Edward Norton, who worked with Williams on the 2019 film Motherless Brooklyn.