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In this June 20, 2008, file photo, Kristoff St. John accepts the award for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series for his work on 'The Young and the Restless' at the 35th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles.Matt Sayles/AP

Kristoff St. John, who won two Daytime Emmy Awards during his long tenure on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless, was found dead early on Sunday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 52.

Sarah Ardalani, a public information officer at the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office, confirmed the death. She said that an autopsy had been conducted, but that the cause of death had not been determined.

Mr. St. John spoke openly about his depression after his 24-year-old son, Julian, died by suicide in 2014. Mark Geragos, Mr. St. John’s lawyer and friend, said in a telephone interview on Monday that Mr. St. John had told him recently that his grief and depression had worsened.

Mr. St. John began playing Neil Winters, a cosmetics executive who struggled with infidelity, alcoholism and many other plot twists, on The Young and the Restless in 1991. He most recently appeared as the character in January, completing nearly 1,700 episodes of the show.

He told the Toronto Star in 1994 that he saw his character as “energetic and striving for the top spot,” someone who “doesn’t really see himself as a ladies’ man but rather quite sensual” and “very secure.”

Mr. St. John won 10 NAACP Image Awards for playing Mr. Winters, one of the longest-running African-American characters on a soap opera.

Kristoff St. John was born on July 15, 1966, in New York and grew up in Bridgeport, Conn., and Los Angeles. His father, Christopher, was a producer, director and actor; his mother, Maria, was an entertainer. Both of them inspired him to enter show business.

“My dad is a producer-director,” Mr. St. John told the Edmonton Journal in 2000. “Had he been a fireman, I’d probably be putting out fires.”

Mr. St. John began acting as a child. His television career started with an appearance on the sitcom That’s My Mama in 1975. He played a young Alex Haley in Roots: The Next Generations (1979), and had a recurring part on the television version of The Bad News Bears, on which his father also appeared. He was also seen on Family Matters, Martin, A Different World, Diagnosis Murder and other shows.

Mr. St. John’s two marriages, to boxer Mia St. John and Allana Nadal, ended in divorce. Last year, he became engaged to Kseniya Mikhaleva, a Russian model.

Mr. St. John had two daughters: Paris, from his first marriage, and Lola, from his second. Complete information on those leaves behind was not immediately available.

His son, Julian, an artist who suffered from schizophrenia, depression and drug addiction, died by suicide by asphyxiating himself with a plastic bag at a mental-health care facility in Long Beach, Calif., in 2014. Mr. St. John and his first wife, Mia, accused the staff of negligence, filing a lawsuit against the facility and airing their grievances in an interview on Entertainment Tonight.

“My son died because there are millions of people suffering from the mental disabilities of schizophrenia, bipolar and being depressed,” Mr. St. John said. “And so at the end of the day, his life will not be in vain. His life will be vindicated, and I will campaign until the day that I die to bring justice to my son.”

The lawsuit was settled in 2017.

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