‘Reservoir Dogs’ Star Michael Madsen Dies at 67

Michael Madsen, the rough-and-tumble actor best known for his work in the Quentin Tarantino films Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, died Thursday morning. He was 67.

Madsen was found unresponsive by deputies responding to a 911 call at his Malibu home and pronounced dead at 8:25 a.m., a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.

Liz Rodriguez, his rep at EMR Media Entertainment, told THR “we understand Michael had a cardiac arrest.”

Madsen’s official bio notes that he “balanced intensity with introspection … whether delivering chilling dialogue or quietly capturing a moment behind the camera, his commitment to storytelling remained constant. He brought both edge and soul to every role, and his enduring influence on American cinema is undeniable.”

His big-screen body of work included WarGames (1983), The Natural (1984), The Doors (1991), Thelma & Louise (1991), Free Willy (1993), Species (1995), Mulholland Falls (1996), Donnie Brasco (1997), Die Another Day (2002), Sin City (2005) and Scary Movie 4 (2006).

He has 346 acting credits and counting on IMDb in a career that began in the early 1980s.

“Fame is a two-edged sword,” he told THR’s Scott Roxborough in 2018. “There are a lot of blessings but also a lot of heavy things that come with it. I think it has a lot to do with the characters I’ve played. I think I’ve been more believable than I should have been. I think people really fear me. They see me and go: ‘Holy shit, there’s that guy!’

“But I’m not that guy. I’m just an actor. I’m a father, I’ve got seven children. I’m married, I’ve been married 20 years. When I’m not making a movie, I’m home, in pajamas, watching The Rifleman on TV, hopefully with my 12-year-old making me a cheeseburger. I sure as hell had my rabble-rousing days, but sooner or later you have to get over that and move on.”

He appeared in dozens of films in the past five years alone, many of which were forgettable.

“Well, sometimes people forget that sometimes you have to pay the mortgage, sometimes you have to put your kids through school,” he said. “You can’t always pick the greatest script. And you pick a project you probably shouldn’t be involved in and then you have to live with it all your life.”

“Michael was one of the greatest American actors,” his friend and lawyer Perry Wander said in a statement. “His onscreen presence was macho, but he was a very sweet, sensitive man who wrote incredible poetry and had it published in a number of books. He was my dearest friend and client for the past 20 years and I will miss him. I’m so sad. I know his soul is at peace.”

One of three kids, Madsen was born in Chicago on Sept. 25, 1957. His father, Calvin, was a firefighter with the Chicago Fire Department, and his mother, Elaine, was an author turned filmmaker who won an Emmy in 1983 for producing the documentary Better Than It Has to Be, about the history of movie-making in the Windy City. His folks divorced when he was 11.

Inspired by Robert Mitchum in the war movie Heaven Knows Mr. Allison (1957), Madsen began his acting career at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, where he learned from John Malkovich and appeared in Of Mice and Men as Carlson, the ranch hand who kills an innocent dog.

After moving to Los Angeles and working as a mechanic at a gas station in Beverly Hills, he appeared in two episodes of NBC’s St. Elsewhere in 1982, then played a cop in WarGames, directed by John Badham.

In Tarantino’s directorial debut film, Reservoir Dogs (1992), Madsen landed the role of the ultra-cruel Mr. Blonde. He said he really wanted to play Mr. Pink because he had more lines with the veteran Harvey Keitel, but Steve Buscemi got that part. It was the psychotic Mr. Blonde or nothing, Tarantino told him.

“I had never met Quentin before,” he told The Independent in a 2016 interview. “I walked in the room at the 20th Century Fox lot and he was standing there with his arms folded, Harvey sitting on the couch in bare feet.” He did get to cut off a cop’s ear in the movie, however.

For Tarantino’s follow-up, Pulp Fiction (1994), Madsen declined the role of Vincent Vega, which went to John Travolta in what would be an Oscar-nominated turn; he had already committed to playing Virgil Earp in Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp (1994).

In the martial arts action films Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and 2, released in 2003 and 2004, Madsen portrayed the assassin Budd (code name Sidewinder) and strip club bouncer who is an early target of the avenging Bride (Uma Thurman).

He then was the quiet cowpoke Joe Gage in The Hateful Eight (2015) and Sheriff Hackett on Bounty Law, the fictional 1960s TV show at the center of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

“Quentin is, in my estimation, the best director of my generation. He’s up there with George Stevens and Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan,” he told Roxborough. “Because of that, because of my relationship with him, it became bigger than anything I ever did. And then Kill Bill put the final stamp on that one. It’s a great blessing to have that and at the same time, it is really hard to get out of it. And people don’t want you to get out of it.

“But if you’re an actor, you want to act, you want to try different stuff. But it is becoming a very, very desperate game, it is becoming a very, very hard, competitive industry. And social media is really brutal. The funny thing is if you look for good things, you are going to find them. If you look for bad things, you are going to find them, too. And most people, sadly, want to look for bad things.”

In addition to his mother, survivors include his two sisters, Oscar-nominated actress Virginia Madsen and Cheryl; his third wife, DeAnna, whom he married in 1996; and his children, Christian, Max, Kal and Luke. His son Hudson died by suicide in 2022 at age 26.

Wrote Virginia Madsen on Facebook: “We’re not mourning a public figure. We’re not mourning a myth — but flesh and blood and ferocious heart. Who stormed through life loud, brilliant, and half on fire. Who leaves us echoes — gruff, brilliant, unrepeatable — half legend, half lullaby. I’ll miss our inside jokes, the sudden laughter, the sound of him. I’ll miss the boy he was before the legend; I miss my big brother.”

Madsen also was a published poet and accomplished photographer, and he has a book, Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts and Poems, due out next year.

Writes Tarantino in the foreword: “For me, the real journey that Michael the writer is exploring is what it means to be a man in a world where the notions of manhood that some of us grew up with are barely remembered. But then if everybody embarked on the hero’s journey, everybody would be a hero, wouldn’t they?”