LEADING Australian theatre star Rob Guest has died in Melbourne after suffering a massive stroke.
Guest, 57, who had been starring in the musical Wicked, died at Melbourne`s St Vincent`s Hospital last night, a spokeswoman for the hospital said.
He was surrounded by family and friends.
Guest was born in Britain but enjoyed fame as a pop star in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s and spent a decade in Las Vegas before his stage musical career took him to Australia.
Guest is best known for playing the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera for most of the 1990s in Australia.
He was the world`s longest serving Phantom having played the role a record 2289 performances over seven years in front of Australian and New Zealand audiences.
Before the news of Guest`s death, Wicked producer John Frost yesterday said the cast from the musical, in which he plays the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, were "shocked" that the actor had suffered a stroke.
"Rob Guest is one of Australian music theatre`s biggest stars: there have been few bigger in our lifetime," Frost said in a statement yesterday.
"He is, nonetheless, the most easy-going of stars. He may have top billing but at all times he comes across to us - producers, fellow cast members and backstage crew - as an irrepressible, always cheerful optimist.
"An all round good bloke. All of us who know him are shocked."
Guest also played Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, starred in productions of Les Miserables and hosted the short-lived 90s TV game show Man O`Man.
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