The actor Bill Nunn, who has died aged 63 of leukaemia, was a gentle giant who appeared frequently as a supporting player in mainstream American movies. He was most closely associated with the writer-director Spike Lee, who cast him in four films. The most widely admired of these was the incendiary Do the Right Thing (1989), set over the course of one hot day in Brooklyn during which racial tensions boil over into violence. Nunn played Radio Raheem, who blasts out Public Enemy’s Fight the Power from a boom-box bigger than most home stereo systems. With the exception of one memorable speech on the nature of love and hate, he is a brooding and taciturn figure. His death while being held in a chokehold by police shifts the picture’s climactic riot to another level.

Nunn claimed on the film’s 25th anniversary two years ago that he was still being recognised in public as Radio Raheem: “It’s pretty much a daily thing. For my career it was huge. I was just starting in films and I’ve been working ever since.” He also acted in Lee’s previous picture, the college campus musical School Daze (1988), and alongside Denzel Washington in two of the director’s subsequent ones: Mo’ Better Blues (1990), about an aspiring jazz trumpeter, and the basketball drama He Got Game (1998).

Bill Nunn as Radio Raheem, talking about love and hate in Do the Right Thing

To wider audiences, Nunn was recognisable as the physical therapist in Regarding Henry (1991) who helps an injured man (Harrison Ford) back to health through unorthodox methods such as splashing his food with hot sauce to get him to speak. He also had a recurring role as the newspaper stalwart Joseph “Robbie” Robertson in Sam Raimi’s trilogy of Spider-Man films, which began in 2002.

Bill was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to William Nunn and his wife, Frances (nee Bell). His father was a journalist who worked his way up through the ranks of the Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper, to become managing editor, before moving to a highly influential career as a scout for the Pittsburgh Steelers; his mother also worked on the Courier. (The paper’s photographer took their wedding pictures.)

Nunn was educated at Schenley high school, Pittsburgh, and the liberal arts-based Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he studied English. It was while at Morehouse that he fell by chance into acting after accompanying a friend to an audition for a play. The director asked Nunn if he would fill out the cast. “He said ‘yeah’,” recalled his sister, Lynell. “So it wasn’t something he initially sought out, but once he got a taste of it he fell in love.”

Bill Nunn as Bradley, the physical therapist, in Regarding Henry, 1991. Photograph: SNAP/REX/Shutterstock

By the time he graduated in 1976, he had decided to put aside his ambitions to become a writer and focus on acting. He stayed in Atlanta after graduating and was an artist in residence at Spelman College. “Fortunately, I never had to do the waiter thing,” he said. “When I got out of college, I immediately started to teach acting. One of the first jobs I had was in a federally funded programme where I taught drama to young people.”

His early years as an actor were spent on the stage. After Do the Right Thing, the screen work came thick and fast. He featured in several hits including the thriller New Jack City (1991) and the comedy Sister Act (1992), in which he played the cop assigned to protect a witness (Whoopi Goldberg) hiding in a convent as a nun. He was also in the mischievous neo-noir The Last Seduction (1994), the oddball crime movie Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, Michael Moore’s comedy Canadian Bacon (both 1995) and numerous thrillers including Extreme Measures (1996), Kiss the Girls (1997) and Runaway Jury (2003). His most recent screen work was as a paramedic on the US TV adaptation (2014-15) of the Channel 4 comedy series Sirens.

From left, JK Simmons, Bill Nunn and Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 2, 2004. Photograph: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

Though Nunn made his name in film, theatre remained important to him. The Bill Nunn Theatre Outreach Project, founded in 2008, aimed to bring professional actors into contact with underfunded public school students in Pittsburgh. Part of the project was the annual Pittsburgh Regional August Wilson Monologue Competition, named after Nunn’s favourite playwright. He starred in one of Wilson’s best-known plays, Fences, in a 2009 production by the Huntington Theatre Company, Boston.

He is survived by his wife, Donna, and their daughters, Jessica and Cydney.

• Bill (William Goldwyn) Nunn, actor, born 20 October 1952; died 24 September 2016