Michael Madsen, Iconic Star Of Reservoir Dogs, Dies Aged 67

Michael Madsen, longtime collaborator of Quentin Tarantino and star of over 300 films and TV shows — including the likes of Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Donnie Brasco — has sadly died at the age of 67. As confirmed to THR by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the iconic actor was found unresponsive at his Malibu home this morning following a suspected cardiac arrest.

Born in Chicago, Illinois on 25 September, 1957 to a war veteran-turned-firefighter father and an Emmy award winning mother, Michael Madsen spent much of his childhood moving from place to place due to his mum’s work, getting into scrapes and testing authority as the perpetual fresh kid in class. Amid a childhood the man himself once described to The LA Times as “chaotic and diversified” however, newborn Michael found artistic inspiration on the box, devouring classics starring the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and Kirk Douglas — a trio of actors whose influence can be keenly felt in Madsen’s own throwback, tough guy on-screen persona.

It wasn’t until a 20-year-old Madsen stumbled upon a performance of Of Mice And Men starring John Malkovich at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre however, leading the then-grease monkey to enrol in a series of scene study classes with Malkovich, that Michael Madsen decided to ditch a prospective future in the police force to follow in his idols’ footsteps. In 1983, Madsen made his movie debut as Lt. Steve Phelps in techno-thriller WarGames, going on to enjoy guest spots on eighties TV classics like Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice, and Crime Story before landing the co-lead opposite Val Kilmer in John Dahl’s 1989 thriller Kill Me Again.

Now, Kill Me Again may be, by all accounts, a pretty unremarkable thriller — Kilmer’s the down-bad detective who falls for Joanne Whalley’s on-the-lam mob moll — but Madsen makes the most of it, bringing fizzing psychopathy and a steady hand on a shooter to Whalley’s crazy boyfriend Vince. In fact, it was Madsen’s performance in Dahl’s movie that caught the eye of one Quentin Tarantino, heralding the beginning of an enduring, fruitful director-actor relationship.

In 1992, following a one-two of eye-catching appearances in Jim Morrison biopic The Doors and Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise, Madsen simultaneously announced his arrival and cemented his legacy as an all-timer Hollywood wise guy with his magnetic turn as body-mutilating, gun-toting, shape-throwing nihilist Mr. Blonde in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The visual of Madsen’s character cutting a rug — and cutting off Officer Nash’s ear — to Stealers Wheel’s ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ is scorched into the retinas of a generation of movie lovers, and will doubtless continue to shock and awe the next.

In the years that followed Reservoir Dogs, Madsen consolidated his tough guy image in the pop cultural consciousness with memorable appearances in movies such as Mulholland Falls, Donnie Brasco, Species, and the 1994 remake of Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway. Despite often playing to type however (and honestly, when you play the type with such verve, why wouldn’t you?), Madsen also added other acting strings to his bow in the nineties, imbuing foster father Glen Greenwood with real warmth in the Free Willy movies and flexing his dramatic chops as Virgil in Lawrence Kasdan’s western epic Wyatt Earp. Even though Madsen was among the most vocal critics of Kasdan’s movie — doubtless at least partly due to having missed out on playing Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction for the gig — it speaks to his artistic aspirations as an actor that he pursued such a bold and risky undertaking alongside the filmmaker.

Still, there would prove to be plenty of time for further Tarantino team-ups in future years for Michael Madsen. Having racked up the credits in the early noughties on everything from Die Another Day to Grand Theft Auto III, Madsen reunited with QT on Kill Bill Vol. I and II. Here, Madsen subverted his hotheaded persona to winning effect as Bill’s younger brother Budd. A sad-sack loner in a massive ol’ cowboy hat who holds the dying embers of a lost American west in the level of his eyes, Budd may be vicious but he’s also remorseful, and Madsen’s delivery of that all-timer of a line, “That woman deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die,” represents the actor at the very peak of his powers.

When Tarantino came a-calling again — first in need of someone to chill as cowboy Joe Gage in 2015’s The Hateful Eight, then for the (sadly cut) role of Sheriff Hackett in 2019’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood — Madsen was always there to pick up. And despite having been beset by struggles with addiction and personal tragedy over the course of his life in the ever-scrutinous spotlight, at the time of Madsen’s passing no less than 18 projects remained on the perpetually booked and busy actor’s horizon, as well as a book — Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts and Poems’ — that is currently being edited for future release.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT

In the hours since his passing, social media has been ablaze with friends, peers, and fans remembering a bona fide star and beloved actor. Michael’s sister and fellow actor Virginia Madsen, in a statement shared with Variety, remembers a dearly beloved brother and deeply complicated man. “My brother Michael has left the stage,” writes Madsen. “He was thunder and velvet. Mischief wrapped in tenderness. A poet disguised as an outlaw. A father, a son, a brother — etched in contradiction, tempered by love that left its mark. We’re not mourning a public figure. We’re not mourning a myth — but flesh and blood and ferocious heart. Who stormed through life deafening, brilliant, and half on fire. Who leaves us echoes — gruff, brilliant, unrepeatable — half legend, half lullaby.”

Flesh and blood and ferocious heart. That is how Virginia Madsen remembers her brother, and that is surely how we too — through his immense body of work — will remember Michael Madsen, now. Our deepest condolences are with Michael’s friends, family, and loved ones at this arduous time: he will be sorely missed.