Gareth Hunt - Later Years

Later Years

Gareth Hunt continued to have minor roles in many television programmes in the 1990s and 2000s, with appearances in The New Adventures of Robin Hood, Harry and the Wrinklies, Absolute Power (as himself), New Tricks, Powers and Doctors. From 1992 to 1993 Hunt had a leading role in the sitcom Side by Side, and had a main role in the short-lived soap opera Night and Day in 2001. In 1997, he appeared in the film Fierce Creatures and in 2001 played Ritchie Stringer, a crime boss who was an unlikely suspect in the shooting of Phil Mitchell, in EastEnders. For a brief time he abandoned acting and started a project called Interactive Casting Universal, a computer system that presented actors' details and showreels.

Hunt suffered a heart attack in December 1999 and withdrew from a pantomime in Malvern. In July 2002 he collapsed while performing on stage in Bournemouth. He died of pancreatic cancer, from which he had suffered for two years, on 14 March 2007, at the age of 65, at his home in Redhill, Surrey. He had married three times and had a son by each marriage.