Michael Madsen, 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Kill Bill' star, dies at 67
[July 05, 2025]
By ANDREW DALTON and ITZEL LUNA
LOS ANGELES (AP) — 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.
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. He was 67.
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 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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
His sister, Oscar-nominated “Sideways” actor Virginia Madsen, was among
those paying him tribute on Thursday.
“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.”
His “Hateful Eight” co-star and fellow Tarantino favorite Walton Goggins
celebrated him on Instagram.
“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.”
James Woods, Madsen's co-star in two films, wrote on X, “I was always
touched by his sweet nature and generosity, the absolute opposite of the
‘tough guys’ he portrayed so brilliantly.”
Madsen was born in Chicago to a family of three children.
He performed on stage with the city's Steppenwolf Theatre Company
alongside actors including John Malkovich.
During a handprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in November 2020,
Madsen reflected on his first visit to Hollywood in the early 1980s.
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Actor Michael Madsen appears at the premiere of "The Hateful Eight"
in Los Angeles on Dec. 7, 2015. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP,
File)
 “I got out and I walked around and I
looked and I wondered if there were someday 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. “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.”
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.”
1991 would bring 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.
Madsen had six children. He had struggled in recent years after the
2022 death of one of his sons, Hudson.
“Losing a child is the hardest and most painful experience that can
happen in this world,” Madsen said in an Instagram post last year.
He said the loss put a strain on his marriage to third wife, DeAnna
Madsen. He was arrested on suspicion of domestic battery last year,
but was not charged. He filed for divorce, but asked that the filing
be dismissed just weeks later.
He had previously been arrested twice on suspicion of DUI, most
recently in 2019, when he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor.
“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. “Michael was also preparing to
release a new book called ‘Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts and
Poems’ currently being edited.”
The memoir includes a foreword from Tarantino.
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