The sudden death of Michael Madsen at the age of 67 has shocked Hollywood. Cinema Paradiso looks back on a career full of hits, misses, and controversies.
How different things might have been had Michael Madsen not shimmied and shuffled to a 1972 hit by a Scottish band seeking to parody Bob Dylan? The sadistic razor cut that followed shifted cinema's relationship with violence and set Michael Madsen alongside Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson in the screen heavy hall of infamy.
According to IMDB, Madsen racked up 344 credits in a four-decade career. The majority were taken to pay bills and Madsen himself didn't bother to watch many of them. But they established him as the tough guy's tough guy, whose gravel-voiced charisma could turn on a dime into psychotic cruelty. Madsen characters were unpredictable and dangerous, yet his official biography insists 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.'
He was never short of self-belief. Yet, when he left his handprints on the pavement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in November 2020, Madsen modestly declared, 'I could have been a bricklayer. I could have been an architect. I could have been a garbage man. I could have been nothing. But I got lucky. I got lucky as an actor.'
Born to Be Wild
Coming between sisters Cheryl and Virginia, Michael Søren Madsen was born in Chicago on 25 September 1957. Of Danish descent, father Calvin was a US Navy veteran who had become a firefighter after his war service, while mother Elaine (née Melson) worked in finance. However, the family broke up and Madsen found it difficult to adapt to his changing circumstances. As he told the Los Angeles Times in 1994, 'My childhood was chaotic and diversified. My parents split up when I was nine and after that we never lived in the same place for more than a year because we didn't have much money and my mother had to work two jobs.'
He continued, 'I suppose I was a juvenile delinquent, and that was probably because I was always the new kid in school coming in at the middle of the year, so I tended to hang out with the outsiders, underdogs and losers. They were more interesting to me and I never fit in with the privileged-people scene, so I wound up getting in trouble.'
Encouraged by the Chicago Sun-Times film critic, Roger Ebert, Elaine started making documentaries. She also made sure that her children were well read. As Madsen recalled, 'My mother introduced me to Kerouac, Henry Miller, Hemingway and Van Gogh.' By contrast, 'my father, who was a Chicago fireman for 30 years, introduced me to people who were burned alive and run over by trains. My father's work exposed me to a very violent aspect of life, and maybe that's where I first got a taste for danger. I remember jumping off roofs and getting into fights from a very young age, so it's hard to say exactly where that came from.'
Trouble kept following Madsen during his time at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. According to The Guardian, he served 'a couple of juvenile jail terms for stealing cars, assault, disorderly conduct and burglary'. At the same time, Elaine's career went from strength to strength and, in 1983, she won an Emmy for producing Better Than It Has to Be, which charted the history of film-making in Chicago. Meanwhile, sister Virginia was taking the first steps that would eventually lead to her earning an Oscar nomination for Alexander Payne's Sideways (2004). Madsen's ambition at this time was to become a NASCAR driver. However, he did start watching classic movies, with his heroes being James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. He was also impressed by Robert Mitchum in John Huston's Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957) and Kirk Douglas in David Miller's Lonely Are the Brave (1962).
During a stint as a mechanic, Madsen was toying with the idea of becoming a cop or a paramedic. In 1980, however, he went to the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago to see John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. He was supposed to hook up with a buddy and a couple of girls. But the dates failed to show and a disgruntled Madsen was forced to focus on the play. By the end, he was so transfixed that he went backstage to speak to actor John Malkovich, who knew Virginia and promised to send her brother some information on taking acting classes.
Malkovich was as good as his word, although Madsen wasn't convinced that he needed lessons in order to act. To his mind, you could either do it or not. A few months later, he found himself in another production of the same Steinbeck drama playing Carlson, the ranch hand who kills an innocent dog. Suddenly, Michael Madsen was an actor. Not that his father was pleased. 'To him,' Madsen explained, 'being a movie actor was kind of like if I'd gone into outer space. He didn't get it. He wanted me to be a cop or a fireman, like him, and that just was not my destiny.'
Jobbing
Deciding that stage acting wasn't for him, Madsen relocated to Los Angeles and started auditioning for film and TV gigs. To pay the rent, he worked at a petrol station, where Jack Lemmon, Cicely Tyson, and Don Knotts were regulars. Warren Beatty told him to get headshots done if he wanted to be an actor, while Fred Astaire once gave him $100 for changing a flat tyre. However, Madsen was an unreliable raconteur, as he told one interviewer that the dance legend was his first ever customer, while another was informed that the encounter took place on Christmas Eve.
The point of the story, however, was that Madsen had managed to land himself in the right place at the right time. He made his feature bow in the starring role of Cecil Moe in Edward T. McDougal's Against All Hope (1982), a low-budget biopic about an alcoholic on the verge of suicide who is rescued by a priest. Bits followed in small-screen staples like St Elsewhere (1982-88), Miami Vice (1984-90), and Cagney & Lacey (1982-88). He never forgave Tyne Daly for omitting him from her acceptance speech when she won an Emmy for the episode in which he had appeared. But his face became more familiar after he played Jimmy Lenox in Edward Zwick's teleplay, Special Bulletin, police lieutenant Steve Phelps in John Badham's hacking thriller WarGames (both 1983), and Frank opposite Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage in Richard Benjamin's Second World War rite of passage, Racing With the Moon (1984).
As Madsen told one reporter, 'I was very idealistic about the life of an actor then, but that changed dramatically because my idealism was subjected to a major reality check early on.' Mickey Rourke had played Boogie in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982) and, when Madsen landed the role in the 1983 pilot for a TV spin-off, he was asked to play Bartholomew 'Bump' Bailey in Levinson's baseball picture, The Natural (1984). Madsen told Deadline, 'I was 23 at the time and had a couple of big scenes with Robert Redford that I think I handled pretty well, but when the film came out and I went to see it I'd been completely cut. Nobody had the dignity, honesty or respect to let me know, and in the long run that was a good thing because it was a slap in the face that wised me up fast to what this business is really like.'
You have to wonder what print Madsen saw, however, as the scene in which Bump is tragically killed when he crashes into the outfield wall while trying to catch a fly ball was the highlight of his career to date. It's certainly better remembered than Madsen's 13 episodes as Augie Danzig in Our Family Honour (1985-86), his two episodes of Crime Story (1986-88), or his guest slots in The Hitchhiker (1989-91), Tour of Duty (1987-90), Jake and the Fatman (1987-92), and Quantum Leap (1989-93). But the series have lasted longer in the memory than Madsen's film roles in this period, as Stu in Rick King's The Killing Time (1987), Sebastian in Monte Hellman's Iguana, Earl in Terrell Tannen's Shadows in the Storm (both 1988), and Enzio in Peter Masterson's Blood Red (1989).
Much more memorable was Madsen's thoroughly nasty turn as Vince Miller, Joanne Whalley's short-fused boyfriend in John Dahl's thriller Kill Me Again (1989). Recalling the picture with a certain pride, Madsen picked out a scene 'where I have a guy tied up in a chair. And I'm hitting him with a baseball bat, then I go around behind him, and I cut his throat in slow motion and his chair falls over.' Despite being famed for seeing virtually everything, Quentin Tarantino insisted he had missed the movie and that it had nothing to do with Madsen's casting as Mr Blonde. But the actor himself had no doubt.
This was still some way into the future, however. First, Madsen would have to keep adding shows to his CV, while also picking up film roles like Earl in Dyan Cannon's The End of Innocence and Pierce in William A. Graham's Larry McMurtry-scripted teleplay, Montana (both 1990). He would also get to play Andy Warhol acolyte Tom Baker, a close friend of Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer), in Oliver Stone's The Doors and then Jimmy Lennox, the genial musician boyfriend of Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) in Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise (both 1991).
Scott had wanted Madsen to play Harlan Puckett, the man who is shot by Louise for raping Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis). But he refused to play a character with so little screen time and Scott was convinced to recast after Madsen took Sarandon to lunch and they had hit it off immediately. Timothy Carhart got to play the loser, while Madsen took pleasure in being sympathetic on screen, as Jimmy sends Louise her savings and comes to Texas to see her while she's on the lam. However, his powers of persuasion failed him the next time he was offered a role he didn't want.
On the QT
Madsen had set his heart on playing Mr Pink in Reservoir Dogs (1992). He had more scenes with his hero, Harvey Keitel, who had signed up for Mr White. Hoping to use his decade of experience to bend first-time director Quentin Tarantino to his will, Madsen asked if he could do a reading. 'For one of the only times in my life I'd rehearsed the dialogue,' he later recalled, 'so I did a couple of Mr Pink scenes. When I was done, Quentin looked at me and went: "Is that it? OK, good. You're not Mr Pink. You're Mr Blonde - and if you're not Mr Blonde, then you're not in the movie."'
Steve Buscemi excelled as Mr Pink. But Madsen's Mr Blonde stole the show, with the sequence in which he torments and tortures Officer Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz), the cop who has been taken hostage in a botched jewellery heist. Even then, Madsen had had his misgivings. At the 2017 cast reunion at the Tribeca Film Festival, he had explained, 'In the script, it said "Mr Blonde maniacally dances around." I remember specifically that's what it said. And I remember thinking, "What the f**k does that mean, Mick Jagger? What the f**k am I going to do?" He trusted me on the day that I would come up with something.' And he did. The menacing, razor-wielding shuffle to 'Stuck in the Middle With You' remains among the most iconic moments in modern cinema.
Even then, Madsen was unhappy about being killed by Tim Roth, a British actor he hadn't heard of. As he told Tara Wood in QT8: The First Eight (2019): 'I was very affected by old films. I was a huge fan of Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin...I knew all those guys were very careful in their roles, and who they acted with or who they got killed by onscreen. That's how you became leading men. I saw myself as the romantic hero. I wanted to be Errol Flynn. I wanted to ride over the hill on my horse with the girl at the end of the movie, you know? I was worried about doing a part like Mr Blonde because I thought, "If I cut this guy's ear off, and then get blasted by Tim Roth, where am I gonna go from there?"'
In the immediate aftermath of becoming a star, Madsen had to wait for a number of films in the can to be released before he could cash in on his new status. He had played Dolly Parton's belittling boyfriend Steve in Barnett Kellman's Straight Talk and Cal Hudson, who abandons pregnant wife Veronica Hamel in Joyce Chopra's Baby Snatcher. But only completists got to see him as detective Cliff Burden in John Dirlam's Fatal Instinct or disgruntled drug cop Richard Montana in Warren Clarke and William Tannen's Inside Edge (all 1992).
Hooking his star to Tarantino, Madsen lobbied for roles in Tony Scott's True Romance (1993) and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), but he missed out - later claiming that the studio had bribed Stone with a $20 million budget bonus if he cast Woody Harrelson in his place. However, he only had himself (and bad timing) to blame for what happened next. Mr Blonde's real name had been Vic Vega and Tarantino had been keen to have Madsen play his brother, Vincent, opposite Laurence Fishburne as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction. However, Madsen had wavered and opted to take the role of Virgil Earp opposite Kevin Costner in Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp (both 1994). As the schedules clashed, John Travolta took on Vincent and earned an Oscar nomination opposite Samuel L. Jackson, as Tarantino's sophomore effort scooped the Palme d'or at Cannes.
For a while, relations between Madsen and Tarantino were frosty. There was talk around 2004 of Vic and Vincent pairing up in Double V Vega. But, as both characters had been killed and neither Madsen nor Travolta was getting any younger to allow them to get away with a prequel, the project was quietly shelved. Eventually, however, Tarantino offered an olive branch in the form of Budd, the hitman brother of David Carradine's eponymous villain in Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004). Code-named Sidewinder, the strip-club bouncer in the cowboy hat showed some respect towards The Bride (Uma Thurman), as he confided in the memorable line, 'That woman deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die.'
With plenty of roles to fill in The Hateful Eight (2015), Tarantino invited Madsen to play Joe Gage (aka 'Grouch' Douglass), a cowboy lodged at Minnie's Haberdashery. The pair's paths had crossed when Tarantino had re-edited Larry Bishop's Hell Ride (2008) and they rubbed along well, even though Madsen had been falsely accused of having put the entire picture in jeopardy by leaking the screenplay online. As if to prove there were no hard feelings, Tarantino also cast Madsen as Sheriff Hackett in Bounty Law, the TV Western show on which Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) work in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019).
For all their ups and downs, the respect was entirely mutual. Madsen told one interviewer, 'Quentin is, in my estimation, the best director of my generation. He's up there with George Stevens and Alfred Hitchcock, Elia Kazan. 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.'
He continued in one of the most revealing insights Madsen ever gave, '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.'
Not Such a Bad Boy
Tarantino once said that 'Michael's a throwback to a breed of actor that includes people like Robert Mitchum, Aldo Ray and Lee Marvin.' Madsen himself always reckoned he was 'a leading man in a bad guy's body' and complained, 'People have been afraid of me because of the parts I played. Nobody remembers that I was the dad in Free Willy. '
Indeed, he was so good as tow truck-owning foster father Glen Greenwood in Simon Wincer's 1993 tearjerker about an attempt by a 12 year-old orphan named Jesse (Jason James Richter) to liberate an orca from an aquarium that Glen and teacher wife Annie (Jayne Atkinson) were reunited with their newly adopted son in Dwight Little's Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home (1995). But the film business prefers to put people in boxes rather than take risks by exploring different characters. Consequently, roles like the devoted Glen became fewer and further between, as Madsen took parts to pay for two failed marriages and a growing family.
Having had a daughter with Dana Mechling, Madsen had married Cher's half-sister, Georganne LaPiere in 1984. However, they had divorced after four years and his union with Jeannine Bisignano lasted the same time, as they parted in 1995. Madsen later recalled this period in his life, as he lived at the Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Boulevard, with his two Rottweilers: 'That was mayhem. Bungalow four, man. Crazy times. The room-service guys wouldn't come in, because the male would always attack them.' However, Blue died and Madsen was bereft: 'It was one of the saddest things that ever happened to me. I was crying for about three days. I had him for 14 years. I still have dogs, but after Blue died, I find it hard to invest myself emotionally in animals. Sooner or later something's going to happen. And I had enough grief in my life.'
With bills to pay, Madsen played Harry Talbot in Jeffrey Reiner's crime comedy, Trouble Bound, before teaming with John Cusack as Detective Pat Laurenzi in Ramón Menéndez's Money For Nothing (both 1993), a true story about a million dollars that literally fell off the back of a lorry. He also cropped up in such overlooked outings as A House in the Hills, Beyond the Law, Almost Blue (all 1993), Season of Change, and Final Combination, as well as providing the voice of Bluebeard in the English dub of Michael Schaack's adult animation, Felidae. He also took an uncredited bit as a gun salesman in Norberto Barba's Blue Tiger (all 1994), which starred his sister, Virginia.
There were choice roles on offer, too, including the menacing Rudy Travis in The Getaway (1994), Roger Donaldson's remake of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway (1972) that saw Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger replace Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. But Madsen took some persuading to play the kitten-coddling psychopath from Jim Thompson's pulp novel. 'At first I didn't want to do The Getaway.' he later confessed, 'because the Reservoir Dogs thing was hanging on me and I didn't want to play any heavies for a while. But ultimately I couldn't resist. It's fun to play a character like this because it's a part that has no boundaries, and the crazier you are the better. I don't think it's ever a good idea to play a character with just one colour, though, so I tried to bring a lighter touch to Rudy. If you're gonna play somebody really demonic you've got to have some humour.'
Madsen also got to flex his acting muscles as mercenary Preston Lennox joins forces with scientist Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley), an empath (Forest Whitaker), a biologist (Marge Helgenberger), and an anthropologist (Alfred Molina) to track down Sil (Natasha Henstridge), a creature that has been genetically engineered through extraterrestrial intelligence in Donaldson's Species (1995). He also landed a rare lead, as John Wilbur Hardin in David Wyles's thriller, Man With a Gun. But it made little impact and Red Line (both 1995) went straight to video. Cinema Paradiso users can make up their own minds about Madsen's next three performances, though, as Wolf in Alex Cox's The Winner, Sal in Peter Markle's Dennis Hopper vehicle, The Last Days of Frankie the Fly, and as tough LAPD detective Eddie Hall in Lee Tamahori's Mulholland Falls (all 1996), which paired him with Nick Nolte.
Things seemed be looking up for Madsen, as he took a break while filming his next picture to marry DeAnna Morgan, who had been introduced to him by actor friend, Elias Koteas. Leaving the shoot in Miami, the couple honeymooned in Jamaica before Madsen returned to complete his scenes as gangster Dominick 'Sonny Black' Napolitano opposite Al Pacino and Johnny Depp in Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco (1997). But, while his reviews were glowing, Madsen took little pleasure in the project. 'Great film, sure,' he later grumbled, 'but not a payday. Al and Johnny got all the money. There was none left for me.'
He was also frustrated at missing out on other major movies. As he told The Guardian, 'I should have at least got a meeting with Spielberg for Saving Private Ryan, ' while ' L.A. Confidential was written with me in mind, but Russell Crowe got the part. Go figure.' A London crime caper with Peter O'Toole entitled Red Light Runners failed to materialise, as did a biopic of mobster Pretty Boy Floyd. But Madsen remained bullish in interviews. 'I could be Dirty Harry's son,' he told one reporter, 'who just got out of prison, you know? I also think I would have made a great Batman, honestly. But nobody would let Michael Madsen play Batman because they don't have an imagination. Everyone wants to play it safe.'
This mentality led to Madsen being confined in a run of mediocre genre flicks that he fumed got made on his name after meetings at Cannes and were then promoted using his picture on the poster and DVD cover, while he saw little in his pay packet. Cinema Paradiso is unique in being able to offer members a fair number of these titles, as Madsen played Skarney in The Maker, Nick James in Executive Target (both 1997), Dallas Grayson in The Sender, Detective Haynes in Diary of a Serial Killer (aka Rough Draft), Press in Species II, Burl Rogers in Too Hard to Die (all 1998), Dalton in Supreme Sanction (1999), Agent Jack Briggs in The Alternate (2000), Alexander in L.A.P.D.: To Protect and to Serve, and John Kennedy Brascoe in The Last Line of Defense 2 (both 2001).
But you're on your own when it comes to The Girl Gets Moe, Catherine's Grove (both 1997), Papertrail, Surface to Air, Detour, Fait Accompli (all 1998), The Florentine, Ballad of the Nightingale, Flat Out (all 1999), The Inspectors 2: A Shred of Evidence, Sacrifice, The Stray, Luck of the Draw, High Noon, The Price of Air, The Thief & the Stripper, Bad Guys, Ultimate Target (all 2000), Fall, Choke, Pressure Point, Extreme Honor, Outlaw, The Ghost, and Love.com (all 2001), as none of them is currently available on any home entertainment format in the UK. We're even willing to bet that Madsen himself didn't see all of them. But boy could that man work!
Taking Whatever Comes Along
Such are the vagaries of Hollywood's casting process that Madsen ended his run of underwhelming assignments with a Bond movie. He wasn't on screen for long as NSA Director Damian Falco in Lee Tamahori's Die Another Day (2002), but his interaction with Halle Berry's Jinx reminded audiences that he was still around. Tarantino called him up for Kill Bill, while Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller found room for him in Sin City (2005), as the corrupt Detective Bob. But the majority of the films he made in between can, at best, be called time-passers.
Madsen was well aware of the situation and unrepentant. 'Some of them I'm only in for 10 minutes,' he explained. 'What people don't always understand is that I established a certain lifestyle for my family back in the days of Species and Mulholland Falls and The Getaway. I wasn't about to move my six kids into a trailer park...when people offered me work, it wasn't always the best, but I had to buy groceries and I had to put gas in the car.'
There's nothing we can currently do about The Real Deal, Welcome to America (both 2002), Vampires Anonymous (2003), Jacked$ (2004), L.A. Dicks, and Ghosts (both 2005). But the Cinema Paradiso vaults do contain Madsen's cameo as himself in Pauly Shore Is Dead, as well as his typically gritty performances as T.J. in My Boss's Daughter, Frank McGregor in 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out (all 2003), Detective Harker in Frankenstein, Wallace Sebastian Blount in Blueberry (aka Renegade, both 2004), and The American in Velvet Revolution (2005). Released the same year, Uwe Boll's BloodRayne qualifies as a must-see in our book, especially as Madsen dismissed it as 'an abomination...It's a horrifying and preposterous movie.' Scripted by Queer icon Guinevere Turner from a popular video game, this raucous horror also features Kristanna Loken, Michelle Rodriguez, Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier, Billy Zane, Ben Kingsley, and Meat Loaf. What's not to love?
Having voiced Maugrim in Andrew Adamson's adaptation of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Madsen delivered another crowd-pleasing turn as the hooded and gloomy Oliver in David Zucker's Scary Movie 4 (2006). More impressive, however, was his display as Sean Kelleher, the washed-up Irish boxer who decides to go back into the ring against the fearsome Smasher O'Driscoll (Vinnie Jones) in Mark Mahon's Strength and Honour (2007), which earned Madsen the Best Actor awards at the Boston Film Festival and the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.
The same year saw Madsen play Miles Rennberg, the underground entrepreneur taunted by Sandra (Asia Argento) in Olivier Assayas's Boarding Gate. Moreover, he got to play himself in Michael Mongillo's Being Michael Madsen (2007), a mockumentary following his efforts to get his own back on the hacks ruining his life that boasts cameos from Virginia Madsen, David Carradine, Harry Dean Stanton, and Daryl Hannah. It really should be on disc, especially as it's much more fun than some of the titles that are.
These have Madsen essaying Colonel J.T. Colt in The Last Drop, J.T. Goldman in Hoboken Hollow (both 2005), Major Blevins in UKM: The Ultimate Killing Machine, Guillermo List in The Covenant: The Brotherhood of Evil, Seal in All In (all 2006), Croc Hawkins in Croc, Cooper in Afghan Knights, Vincent Scaillo in Crash and Burn, Jackal in Tooth and Nail (all 2007), Dean in Deep Winter (2008), J. Marcone in Road of No Return, Father Roy in The Bleeding, and Willie in Fighter (aka The Kid: Chamaco, both 2009).
In all, Madsen made eight films in 2006, seven in 2007, nine in 2008, and 17 in 2009. We won't clutter the page with screeds of unavailable films, but we do take a quiet pride in being able to offer Cinema Paradiso members a representative sampling of these 41 films that will otherwise sadly be forgotten.
In 2010, Madsen also appeared in a Season 8 episode of CSI Miami (2002-12) as Cooper Daly before joining Keifer Sutherland's Jack Bauer as Jim Ricker in 24 (2001-10). Two years later, he followed a voiceover as Kevin Costner in Bob's Burgers (2011-18) and a guest slot as Benjamin Walker in Blue Bloods (2010-24) by competing in Celebrity Big Brother. He came a creditable fourth behind rugby player Gareth Thomas, X Factor finalist Frankie Cocozza, and actress and Loose Woman, Denise Welch.
King of the Bs
For the final phase of his career, Madsen toiled in the Hollywood B hive. He was very good at what he did. But what he did rarely reached UK cinema screens. Consequently, a fair proportion of the dozens of pictures that he made in the last 15 years of his life are not available on disc. Those that are can be rented from Cinema Paradiso.
In 2010, Madsen appeared in 11 movies, with one critic comparing his performance as Doe in The Killing Jar to Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee in Archie Mayo's The Petrified Forest (1936). Frustratingly, this is out of reach, but you know where to come if you want to see Madsen as Carter in Terror Trap, Dr Turner in Let the Game Begin, Martell in The Big I Am, Dr Azirra in The Portal, and Senator John Mordire in Corruption. He also guested in an episode of Hawaii Five-0 (2010-19) and contributed voicework to both Green Lantern: First Flight (2009) and Lion of Judah (2011).
Ten more features were added to the Madsen CV in 2011, with his turns as Lieutenant Brandon Ross in Forest of the Living Dead and Martin Keele in Amsterdam Heavy being overshadowed by a splendidly knowing display as Dr Robert Lovegrove, a herpetologist fleeing through the jungles of Hawaii from a ravenously vengeful hybrid critter in exploitation maverick Jim Wynorski's Piranhaconda. Given the fact that this teleplay is available here, you might have thought the combination of Madsen, Burt Reynolds, Chevy Chase, and Vinnie Jones might have made Not Another Not Another Movie (2012) a viable prospect, but no.
One can only imagine that Madsen had fun making this kind of malarkey, as he rattled off another 11 titles in 2012. His efforts as Ted in Eldorado, Terence in Diamond Heist (aka Magic Boys) and Louis in Infection Z (aka Infected) are ready to rent. But, while Madsen showed up in 11 features and a short in 2013, only his outing as Wolf in Alien Battlefield (aka Nomad: The Beginning) is available in this country. This is a shame, as who wouldn't want to watch Michael Madsen in a Christian drama entitled I'm in Love With a Church Girl?
A telltale sign that some of these movies aren't the best is the fact that they have been re-titled for their UK release in an effort to distance them from damning US reviews. But Madsen took every film he made seriously and, for that reason alone, we draw your attention to them for rental consideration. A slow 2014 included a turn as Lobo in Death Squad, but Madsen was back to churning out flicks the following year, as he played Manol in Hope Lost, The Boss in A Hitman in London (aka Skin Traffik), and Casey in Trapped (aka Flipped, among the baker's dozen he graced in 2015.
The year also saw Madsen lose his father. He told an interviewer, 'I know my father loved me, but it wasn't ever shown to me. I think a lot of guys my age grew up with that sort of situation. He was very fragile at the end, but I could tell that he was proud of me.' Undaunted, Madsen ticked off another 10 titles in 2016, with Cinema Paradiso members being able to catch his work as Moreau in Vigilante Diaries, Mihai in Kidnapped in Romania, and Enzo in Brooklyn's Greatest (aka Back in the Day).
We draw a blank in 2017, despite someone having the imagination to redub Tom Holland's Rock, Paper, Scissors as Rock, Paper, Dead in the UK. But Madsen fans can pick up the trail again in 2018, as his output doubled from four to eight features, one of which was the TV-movie, Megalodon, another creature feature in which he played Admiral King.
By now in demand to voice video games and guest in web series, Madsen also started writing poetry. He published four volumes of verse, Beer, Blood and Ashes, Eat the Worm, Burning in Paradise, and The Blessing of the Hounds. But he modestly insisted that he scribbled many of them on whatever came to hand: 'Hotel napkins, bar bills, beer mats. I wrote a poem on my leg once, on the skin.' The latter tomes were introduced by Dennis Hopper and Quentin Tarantino, with the latter also contributing a foreword to Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts and Poems, which was published a couple of weeks before Madsen's death. Tarantino wrote: '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?'
For many years, Madsen had lived in the Malibu mansion that had been built by drummer Keith Moon in 1974 and had previously been occupied by Walt Disney's daughter and Ted Danson. In 2018, however, his new accommodation burned down during the Woolsey Fire. Indeed, it was a difficult period, as Madsen confided in an interview: 'I had a bad motorcycle accident and had to get my back operated on. I got a couple of DUIs. I had terrible, terrible times. Fame is not what it's cracked up to be. I'm not complaining, because I've had a great life. But it can wreak havoc on you if you're not protected.'
There was always work, of course, although he lost his role in Confessions of a Serial Killer after crashing his Land Rover while under the influence. Only his turn as Bob Linsky in Burning Rubber (aka Trading Paint) made it to UK disc from 2019, while Shark Attack (aka Shark Season) is alone available from 2020. Madsen was Lord Samuel Morgan in American Night (2021) and Peter in The Incarnation (2022). But this was a difficult year, with the actor being detained for trespass at the house from which he had recently been evicted in the wake of his soldier son Hudson's suicide.
Further problems followed, when Madsen was arrested on a battery charge in August 2024 and he was forced to scotch rumours of a divorce. He shook off the bad press to keep working, but his performance as the infamous antebellum renegade William Quantrill in Ashley Cahill's Resurrection Road (2025) was the last to reach screens during his lifetime, as Madsen died from cardiac arrest at his Malibu home on 3 July. He was 67 years old.
Virginia Madsen wrote on Facebook: 'My brother Michael has left the stage. 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 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.'
According to IMDB, Madsen had 17 assignments in various stages of development and it remains to be seen how many of these will see the light of a projector beam. Madsen never shied away from the fact that he was a jobbing actor, but he had great faith in his ability and the persona he projected. 'Maybe I was just born in the wrong era, man,' he surmised in The Guardian in 2004. 'I'm a bit of a throwback to the days of black-and-white movies. Those guys back then, they had a certain kind of directness about them. A lot of the screenplays, the plots were very simplistic - they gave rise to a type of antihero that maybe I suit better. The type of character I think I play really well is somebody who's not perfect, who's a little rough around the edges…not out of a GQ magazine, and might have a cigarette now and then or need a shave, but you can bet your ass I'm gonna do the right thing. That's the real Michael more than anything, and I just wish it was captured on film.'
This sense of disgruntlement recurred in a 2018 sit-down with The Hollywood Reporter. 'Fame is a two-edged sword,' Madsen declared. '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 s**t, 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.'
Michael Madsen has moved on. But he leaves a vast body of work to be remembered by. Much of it is moderate at best. But the collaborations with Quentin Tarantino will endure and he'll always be stuck in the middle, with a shuffle, a razor, and an ear. 'Can you hear that?'
Kill Me Again (1989)
Having cheated partner in crime Vince Miller (Michael Madsen) out of the proceeds of a robbery, Fay Forrester (Joanne Whalley) poses as an abused wife in order to persuade widowed Reno detective Jack Andrews (Val Kilmer) to help her fake her own death.
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Musician Jimmy Lennox (Madsen) is so devoted to Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) that, when she kills the man who had raped her best friend, Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis), he supports her entirely when they go on the run.
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Needing a crew to rob a jewellery store, Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and son 'Nice Guy' Eddie (Chris Penn) give coloured codenames to recruits Mr White (Harvey Keitel), Mr Orange (Tim Roth), Mr Blonde (Madsen), Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr Brown (Quentin Tarantino), and Mr Blue (Edward Bunker). But things don't go smoothly.
Free Willy (1993)
When a 12 year-old orphan, Jesse (Jason James Richter), discovers an unhappy whale at the Northwest Adventure Park, he persuades foster parents Annie (Jayne Atkinson) and Glen Greenwood (Madsen) to help him liberate the orca and return it to the ocean.
The Getaway (1994)
Fresh out of jail, Carter 'Doc' McCoy (Alec Baldwin) asks wife Carol (Kim Basinger) to get him a spot in the gang that Jack Benyon (James Woods) is putting together in order to rob an Arizona dog track. However, one of the team is Rudy Travis (Madsen), whose treachery had landed Doc in a Mexican slammer.
Species (1995)
Having unleashed an alien hybrid named Sil (Natasha Henstridge) during a bungled experiment, Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) assembles a team to track and kill her that is comprised of anthropologist Dr Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina), molecular biologist Dr Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger), empath Dan Smithson (Forest Whitaker), and black ops mercenary Preston 'Press' Lennox (Madsen).
Mulholland Falls (1996)
Fresh from throwing a Chicago gangster to his death in frustration at their limited powers as 1950s LAPD officers, Lieutenant Maxwell Hoover (Nick Nolte) and detectives Ellery Coolidge (Chazz Palminteri), Eddie Hall (Madsen), and Arthur Relyea (Chris Penn) find themselves investigating a sensational case with potentially explosive consequences.
Donnie Brasco (1997)
FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone poses as jewel thief Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp) in order to befriend Benjamin 'Lefty' Ruggiero (Al Pacino), an ageing enforcer for the Bonanno crime family, whose oppos include Paulie (James Russo), Nick Santon (Bruno Kirby), and Dominick 'Sonny Black' Napolitano (Madsen).
Sin City (2005)
Cop John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) and partner Detective Bob (Madsen) are detailed to investigate a series of sex crimes that Bob is being bribed to overlook by Senator Ethan Roark (Powers Boothe), as they are being committed by his son, Ethan Junior (Nick Stahl).
Strength and Honour (2007)
Despite vowing never to fight again after accidentally killing an opponent, Irish-American boxer Sean Kelleher (Madsen) agrees to take on Smasher O'Driscoll (Vinnie Jones) in a bid to raise the money to pay for an operation for his sickly son.
