Anthony Guidera died Saturday at 65 in a Los Angeles-area hospital after being taken off life support, ending the life of an actor-model whose face turned up in some of the 1990s’ most familiar studio films. His wife, Valarie, said he had suffered a heart issue at home on May 11.

Guidera is being searched now because his death closes the story of a performer who moved between modeling, film and television with an easy presence and a long list of credits. He played pilots in The Rock and Armageddon, appeared in The Godfather Part III, and kept working across movies and TV well into the 2000s, with his last credit coming in an episode of L.A. Dicks in 2005.

He was born in San Francisco on Oct. 18, 1960, then spent about a decade in Paris making commercials and modeling under the name James Guidera before turning to acting. He performed in plays in Paris, studied with Robert Lewis at The Actors Studio in New York and landed his first onscreen role as a bodyguard in The Godfather Part III in 1990, a film he worked on for five months.

For many viewers, though, his most memorable moment came in Species. Guidera’s character forced Sil to kiss him without knowing she was an alien-human hybrid organism, and the scene later won best kiss at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards. The praise stuck even though the moment was meant to be unsettling, with the kiss ending in disastrous results that made it unforgettable for reasons that had little to do with romance.

That contrast helped define the unusual shape of Guidera’s screen career: small parts that lingered. He appeared in ’Til There Was You and The Postman in 1997 and The Annihilation of Fish in 1999, while his television credits ranged from Renegade and Baywatch to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Red Shoe Diaries, Hope & Gloria, Nash Bridges, Acapulco H.E.A.T., Angel, ER and L.A. Dicks.

What remains unanswered is the narrow stretch between the May 11 heart issue and his death in hospital. Valarie has not detailed what care he received in that interval, and that silence leaves only the outline of his final days: home, emergency illness, life support and, on Saturday, the end.