LOS ANGELES (AP) — M. Emmett Walsh is a character actor who brings an unmistakable face and an eerie presence to the movies. movie The “Blood Simple” and “Blade Runner” actor has died at the age of 88, his manager announced Wednesday.
Walsh died Tuesday of cardiac arrest at a hospital in St. Albans, Vermont, his longtime manager Sandy Joseph announced.
Big-faced and heavy-set, Walsh is as sinister as he was in the Coen brothers' first film, the 1984 neo-noir Blood Simple, where he played one of the rare leading roles, a twisted Texas private detective. He often played the role of a good old boy.
Joel and Ethan Coen said they wrote the role for Walsh, who would go on to win the inaugural Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead for the role.
Critics and movie buffs rejoiced the moment he appeared on screen.
Roger Ebert once said, “No movie with Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmett Walsh in a supporting role is bad at all.''
Walsh played a crazed sniper in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy “The Jerk” and a prostate exam doctor in the 1985 Chevy Chase vehicle “Fletch.”
The painstaking 1982 film “Blade Runner,” which Walsh said was grueling and difficult to make under perfectionist director Ridley Scott, was a hard-nosed film that brought Harrison Ford out of retirement to hunt cyborgs. He plays a police chief.
Born Michael Emmett Walsh, his character led people to believe that he was from the American South, but it was hard to imagine that he was from further north.
Mr. Walsh grew up on Lake Champlain in Swanton, Vermont, just a few miles from the U.S.-Canada border, where his grandfather, father, and older brother worked as customs agents.
He attended a small local high school with a graduating class of 13 students, then attended Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, and then the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.
For 10 years, he worked exclusively on stage, working for summer stock and repertory companies, with no intention of doing anything else.
Walsh gradually began acting in films in 1969, starting with a bit part in Alice's Restaurant, but it wasn't until nearly a decade later, in his 40s, that he began to take on prominent roles, and in 1978's Straight.・Time” became a big hit. He played Dustin Hoffman's smug and rough parole officer.
In the fall of 1982, Walsh was filming “Silkwood'' with Meryl Streep in Dallas when the Coen brothers, then aspiring filmmakers who had seen him in “Straight Time'' and loved him, approached him with “Blood Simple.'' ” I received an offer.
“My agent called me and brought me a script for a low-budget film that my kids had written,” Walsh told the Guardian in 2017. “It was like Sidney Greenstreet in a Panama suit and hat. I thought it was kind of fun and interesting. They were in Austin, 100 miles away, so I went there early the day before filming. ”
Director Walsh said the filmmakers didn't even have enough money left to fly to New York for the opening, but he was amazed that the first-time filmmakers had made such a great film. He said he would be surprised.
“I saw it three or four days later when it came out in Los Angeles, and I was like, 'Wow!'” he said. “Suddenly, the price went up five times. I was the guy everyone wanted.”
In the film, he plays Lauren Visser, a detective who is hired to track down a man's wife and is paid to kill her and her lover.
Visser also served as narrator, and Texas' extended opening monologue contained some of Walsh's most memorable lines.
“Right now in Russia, the plan is for everyone to work together for everyone else's benefit. That's the theory anyway,” Visser says. “But what I know is Texas. And here, you're on your own.”
He continued to work into his late 80s, most recently starring in the television series “The Righteous Gemstones” and “American Gigolo.”
And he has more than 100 film credits, including Rian Johnson's 2019 family murder mystery Knives Out and this year's Mario Van Peebles western Outlaw Posse. There is.
Mr Johnson was among those who paid tribute to Mr Walsh on social media.
“Emmett came in with two things: a copy of the credits, a two-column list of modern classics with single spacing in small print that filled the entire page; These are two dollar bills that he handed out to everyone on board.” Mr Johnson tweeted. “'If you don't spend money, you'll never go broke.'” An absolute legend. ”
