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Michael Madsen, star of Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, dies at 67
Michael Madsen, star of Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, dies at 67

National Post

timean hour ago

  • National Post

Michael Madsen, star of Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, dies at 67

LOS ANGELES — Michael Madsen, the actor best known for his coolly menacing, steely-eyed, often sadistic characters in the films of Quentin Tarantino including Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill: Vol. 2, has died. Article content Madsen was found unresponsive in his home in Malibu, Calif., on Thursday morning and pronounced dead, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Watch Commander Christopher Jauregui said. He is believed to have died of natural causes and authorities do not suspect any foul play was involved. Madsen's manager Ron Smith said cardiac arrest was the apparent cause. He was 67. Article content Article content Madsen's career spanned more than 300 credits stretching back to the early 1980s, many in low-budget and independent films. He often played low-level thugs, gangsters and shady cops in small roles. Tarantino would use that identity, but make him a main character. Article content His torture of a captured police officer in Tarantino's 1992 directorial debut Reservoir Dogs, in which Madsen's black-suited bank robber Vic 'Mr. Blonde' Vega severs the man's ear while dancing to Stealers Wheel's Stuck in the Middle with You was an early career-defining moment for both director and actor. Article content Madsen told the Associated Press in 2012 that he hated having to do the scene, especially after the actor playing the officer, Kirk Baltz, ad-libbed a line where he begged for his life because he had children. Article content 'I just said, 'Oh my God,' I couldn't do it, I didn't want to do it,' Madsen said. 'Acting is such a humiliating profession.' Article content He would become a Tarantino regular. He had a small role as the cowboy-hatted desert dweller Budd, a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, in 2003's Kill Bill: Vol. 1, then a starring role the following year in the sequel, in which he battles with Uma Thurman's protagonist The Bride and buries her alive. Article content Madsen also appeared in Tarantino's The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood. He was an alternate choice to play the hit man role that revived John Travolta's career in 1994's Pulp Fiction. The character, Vincent Vega, is the brother of Madsen's Reservoir Dogs robber in Tarantino's cinematic universe. Article content Article content Article content His sister, Oscar-nominated Sideways actor Virginia Madsen, was among those paying him tribute on Thursday. Article content '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,' she said in a statement. '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.' Article content His Hateful Eight co-star and fellow Tarantino favourite Walton Goggins celebrated him on Instagram. Article content 'Michael Madsen… this man… this artist… this poet… this rascal…' Goggins wrote. 'Aura like no one else. Ain't enough words so I'll just say this…. I love you buddy. A H8TER forever.'

For George Takei, coming out has been a lifelong process
For George Takei, coming out has been a lifelong process

CBC

timean hour ago

  • CBC

For George Takei, coming out has been a lifelong process

Social Sharing At a young age, George Takei learned that he was different — and being perceived as different could be dangerous. The actor who's best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek spent his childhood in two internment camps during the Second World War, when people of Japanese descent were forcibly and wrongfully incarcerated across the U.S. and Canada. Takei wrote about that experience in his 2019 graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy. After the war ended, Takei and his family moved to a low-income neighbourhood of Los Angeles where he quickly discovered that there was something else about him that made him different: he was attracted to other boys. "I decided I didn't want to be different again," the actor tells Q guest host Talia Schlanger in an interview. "I started acting like the other boys…. I was able to build another kind of barbed wire fence, an invisible barbed wire fence that kept me confined in my body and not visibly identifiable." Now, Takei has released a new graphic memoir, It Rhymes with Takei, which unpacks his experience living as a closeted gay man until 2005, when he publicly came out at the age of 68. In the book, he explains that coming out isn't as simple as opening a door — it's a lifelong process. "I use the metaphor for a long, narrow, dark corridor," he says. "But then you come to a window that allows a little light in … and you keep walking down that corridor and you finally reach that doorknob and you make a decision: you grab it and you open it, ready for combat, if you will." After being punished for his differences in childhood, it's understandable why Takei was fearful of revealing his true self. Even just 20 years ago, he thought disclosing his sexual orientation would mark the end of his career. "But the very opposite happened," he says. "Media seemed to love it. And I started getting calls from CBS, NBC, ABC, from various magazine periodicals. They wanted to know the story behind gay George Takei. Or they wrote roles, like on The Big Bang Theory, for gay George Takei in my Star Trek uniform. And my career blossomed."

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