Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill actor Michael Madsen dead at 67

Michael Madsen, whose menacing characters in Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill made him a standout in Quentin Tarantino's films, has died. He was 67.

Madsen was found unresponsive in his home in Malibu, Calif., on Thursday morning and pronounced dead, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Watch Cmdr. 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.

Born and raised in Chicago, Madsen's career stretched back to the early 1980s, with films running the gamut from Hollywood blockbuster to ultra-low budget. 

Alongside his career as an actor, Madsen was also a poet; he published several collections including Burning in Paradise, Expecting Rainˆand an upcoming book titled Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts and Poems. That book is currently being edited, his representatives stated. 

With over 300 credits to his name, the prolific actor appeared often in lower-budget and independent films — what Reservoir Dogs began as before achieving cult status. According to his representatives, Madsen had spent the years before his death working on upcoming indie films, including the titles Resurrection Road, Concessions and Cookbook for Southern Housewives.

"The rumours of my demise are usually greatly exaggerated," Madsen told Huffpost in a 2014 interview about his affinity toward lesser-known, occasionally non-American productions. "If you're not in the latest blockbuster, then people think you've left the planet."

But Madsen's deep, gravelly baritone and talent for portraying menacing but entrancing bad guys reliably drew him back to the mainstream. After an early appearance in 1983's WarGames, his big break was a particular performance in Reservoir Dogs: his 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 as the maniacal Budd and in The Hateful Eight as the deadly but disarming Joe Gage. 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 … someday, some way, 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. "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."