Emmy award-winning actor John Ritter died suddenly Thursday night due to a previously undetected arterial problem. He was 54.

Ritter was filming his hit ABC show, “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter,” when he collapsed. He was taken to a hospital in Burbank, California, across the street from the studio.

He died from a “dissection of the aorta,” which results from an unrecognized flaw in a main artery from the heart, his publicists, Wolf-Kasteler & Associates Public Relations, said, according to Reuters.

Ritter was best known for playing Jack Tripper in Three’s Company. He won Emmy, Golden Globe and People’s Choice awards for his roll in the 1970s series.

He is survived by his wife, Amy Yasbeck and their daughter, Stella and three children, Carly, Tyler and Jason, from his first marriage to Nancy Morgan.






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