RIP Michael Madsen: Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs Actor Dies at 67
Prolific character actor and frequent Quentin Tarantino collaborator Michael Madsen, who portrayed some of the most memorably gruff characters in the auteur director’s filmography, has reportedly passed away at the age of 67, per NBC News. The star of everything from Donnie Brasco and Reservoir Dogs to Kill Bill Vol. 2 was found unresponsive in his Malibu home on Thursday, with cause of death listed as cardiac arrest. He leaves behind numerous upcoming projects that have already been shot, along with a book of memoirs and poetry. He had several children, and is survived by wife DeAnna Morgan and sister Virginia Madsen, also a prominent actress.
“In the last two years Michael Madsen has been doing some incredible work with independent film including upcoming feature films Resurrection Road, Concessions and Cookbook for Southern Housewives, and was really looking forward to this next chapter in his life,” said managers Susan Ferris and Ron Smith, and publicist Liz Rodriguez in a statement to the media. “Michael was also preparing to release a new book called Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts and Poems, currently being edited. Michael Madsen was one of Hollywood’s most iconic actors, who will be missed by many.”
Certainly, those who had seen Madsen perform could rarely forget the unique energy he brought to the screen. He was famous for playing enigmatic tough guy characters who could be both psychopathic or sympathetic as the need called for–he was part of the pathos of Susan Sarandon’s character as her boyfriend in 1991’s Thelma & Louise, and then shot to fame as the ear-slicing, wantonly cruel Mr. Blonde in Quentin Tarantino’s heralded debut Reservoir Dogs. The sequence of Madsen torturing a man as he soliloquies and dances to the Stealers Wheel song “Stuck In the Middle With You” has lived on in cinematic immortality in the decades since, still being one of the most oft-referenced moments in Tarantino’s oeuvre. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the response to Reservoir Dogs, Madsen was actually desired for another starring part in 1994’s Pulp Fiction, but scheduling conflicts kept him from taking the role of Vincent Vega that eventually went to John Travolta. One wonders how differently Madsen’s trajectory might have been if that small item had been tweaked.
