Andre Braugher died from lung cancer, a representative says.

When the Emmy-winning actor who starred in the series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Homicide: Life on the Street died on Monday at age 61, his representatives said only that he had been through a brief illness.

His publicist Jennifer Allen gave the cause on Thursday (US time).

Braugher generally revealed little about his private life, and his death was unexpected for many of his co-stars.

He told the New York Times in 2014 that he had stopped smoking and drinking years previously.

The Chicago-born Braugher had his Hollywood breakthrough in the 1989 film Glory acting alongside Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. He went on to play Detective Frank Pembleton, the lead role in the NBC police drama Homicide: Life on the Street, for seven seasons.

He won the first of two career Emmys for his work on the show.

Braugher was nominated for Emmys 11 times, four of them for the comic turn he took as Captain Raymond Holt on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the Andy Samberg-starring series that ran for eight seasons on Fox and NBC.

Though he had dabbled in comedy with the TNT dramedy Men of a Certain Age, Brooklyn Nine-Nine still represented a major shift for Braugher, who was known for acting in dark and heavy dramas.

“I just felt as though it was an opportunity to do something strikingly different from the rest of my career,” Braugher told the Associated Press in 2019.

“I like it because it just simply opens up my mind and forces me to think in a different way.”

He was nominated for four Emmys during the run.

Braugher’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-star Terry Crews was among those paying tribute earlier this week, saying Braugher “showed me what a life well-lived looked like”.

Born and raised in Chicago, Braugher graduated from Stanford and got a master of fine arts degree from Juilliard.

In Glory, a film about an all-black army regiment during the Civil War, Braugher played the bookish, frightened union corporal Thomas Searles. Despite the part, he told the AP in 2019 that before Homicide he struggled to find work in a Hollywood where roles for African American actors were “few and far between, Period.”

Braugher won his second Emmy for lead actor in a miniseries or movie for the 2006 limited series Thief on FX.

His other film credits included Primal Fear and Get on the Bus, and his other TV credits included Hack, Gideon’s Crossing and The Good Fight.

He also acted frequently on the stage, often doing Shakespeare. He won an Obie Award for playing Henry V at the New York Shakespeare Festival.

Braugher was married for more than 30 years to his Homicide co-star Ami Brabson, and is also survived by sons Michael, Isaiah and John Wesley.

-with AAP