Jim Cook, a respected actor in Pittsburgh's alternative theater scene, died of a heart attack Wednesday at his home in Arlington. He was 54.

Mr. Cook was physically fit, an avid kayaker and expert in a stress-relieving method performers and athletes use called the Alexander Technique. He got a clean bill of health from his doctor just a few weeks ago.

So while it is always jarring when someone dies so suddenly, his friends and his mother, Jean, were especially shocked last week that he was gone.

"All of a sudden at age 50 he got the kayak bug. While he would go over waterfalls and all that stuff, I stayed home and prayed," his mother said. "That's the way I thought he'd go -- I really did."

But Mr. Cook's father and his grandfather also died of heart attacks in their early 50s and he could not outrun his genes. "He took beautiful care of himself," Mrs. Cook, of Mt. Lebanon, said.

Mr. Cook's girlfriend, Kim Richards, met him in July 2005, two months after starting her run as star of "Late Night Catechism" at City Theatre. What started as a six-week run would become a huge success -- running for 74 weeks -- and one Sunday she was invited to a barbeque at Mr. Cook's house.

The accomplished cook, who formerly worked in the front of the house at Casbah, won her over.

"I remember coming in and sitting down in this nice house, a nice place, so warm, with a lot of art and huge collection of music," Ms. Richards said. "There were walls with rows and rows of albums, CDs, books. It was such a good feeling to be there."

James W. Cook III was born west of Philadelphia in West Grove, Chester County. His father, who was in insurance, dreamed of being an actor and as a boy Jim did, too.

"He performed from the time he could walk. He would twist me around like it was nobody's business," his mother said.

He graduated from Wilmington College in Ohio with degrees in psychology and drama in 1972, and went to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. He worked in New York City, Williamsburg, Va., and Gettysburg before relocating to Pittsburgh in the late 1980s with his then wife.

As with most actors, Mr. Cook had to keep a day job to pay the bills while acting -- his latest job was in the facilities department of Buchanan Ingersoll Rooney's law offices Downtown.

"I've always had this hairline, this look," Mr. Cook told the Post-Gazette in 1995, talking about his silver locks. "I always played the older guy, never the romantic lead. But I knew the roles would come my way when I hit my 30s and 40s and, thank goodness, it's worked out that way.

"I don't think anyone gets into the theater business because they say, 'It's a stable job and I'll make a living at it.' If you're in it after 40, it's because you love it. When you're 20, a hundred people may be going after these parts. When you're 40, it's maybe 10 people. The other people deserted for real jobs."

Mr. Cook's credits at Upstairs Theatre included Ned Weeks in "Normal Heart" and "Destiny of Me;" Sterling in "Jeffrey;" Flan in "Six Degrees of Separation;" and Gregory in "Love! Valour! Compassion!;" "El Salvador" at Axiom Theater; and "Suicide in B-Flat" at Pittsburgh Theater Laboratories.

Further roles included: Stuckley in Howard Barker's "The Castle," the Over-Seer in Suzan Lori-Park's "Third Kingdom" and Claudius in Heiner Muller's "Hamletmachine."

For Unseam'd Shakespeare he played Gloucester in "King Lear" and Buckingham in "Richard III." He was Lead Actor in Quantum Theatre's "Six Characters Looking For A Writer."

In the 1990s, Kellee Van Aken worked with Mr. Cook at City Theatre during "Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde" and in productions for timespace, an experimental collective in Oakland.

"It was great because at the time we were all a bunch of young punks and it gave us an older person who was as interested in doing radical work as we were," she said. "He was always the person who was up for fun or for a good joke during the run. He had a great sense of humor -- a great capacity to be silly."

Visitation will be from 7 to 9 p.m. tomorrow at Beinhauers, 2630 W. Liberty Ave., Dormont, with services and interment private. Monday is a regular night off for most actors, Mrs. Cook noted.