Michael Madsen, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill star, dies at 67
Madsen was found unresponsive in his home in Malibu, California 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.
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.
His most memorable screen moment may have been the sadistic torture of a captured police officer — while dancing to Stealers Wheel's Stuck in the Middle with You — as Mr Blonde in 1992's Reservoir Dogs.
He would become a Tarantino regular, appearing in the Kill Bill films and The Hateful Eight.
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.
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.
"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," his managers Smith and Susan Ferris and publicist Liz Rodriguez said in a statement.
They added that he "was one of Hollywood's most iconic actors, who will be missed by many".
During a handprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in November 2020, Madsen reflected on his first visit to Hollywood in the early 1980s.
"I got out and I walked around and I looked and I wondered if there were some day some way that that was going to be a part of me. And I didn't know because I didn't know what I was going to do at that point with myself," he said.
Madsen was born in Chicago to a family of three children. His sister is Oscar-nominated Sideways actor Virginia Madsen.
He performed on stage with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company alongside actors including John Malkovich.
His first film role of any significance was in the 1983 hacker thriller WarGames with Matthew Broderick. The following year he played pro baseball player Bump Bailey alongside Robert Redford in The Natural.
He spent much of the rest of the 1980s doing one-off guest roles on television dramas including Miami Vice and Quantum Leap.
In 1991, he had a career boost with roles in The Doors, where he played a buddy of Val Kilmer's Jim Morrison, and Thelma and Louise where he played the boyfriend of Susan Sarandon's Louise.
Then would come Reservoir Dogs.
In 1995, he played a black ops mercenary in the sci-fi thriller Species and in 1997 he was third billed after Al Pacino and Johnny Depp as a member of a crew of gangsters in Donnie Brasco.
He occasionally played against type. In the 1993 family orca adventure Free Willy he was the foster father to the orphan protagonist.
Madsen would return to smaller roles but worked constantly in the final two decades of his career.
AP
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