Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill actor Michael Madsen dead at 67

Jackson Weaver · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 03, 2025 2:12 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

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

Madsen was recovered unresponsive successful his location successful Malibu, Calif., connected Thursday greeting and pronounced dead, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Watch Cmdr. Christopher Jauregui said. He is believed to person died of earthy causes and authorities bash not fishy immoderate foul play was involved. Madsen's manager Ron Smith said cardiac apprehension was the evident cause.

Born and raised successful Chicago, Madsen's vocation stretched back to the aboriginal 1980s, with films moving the gamut from Hollywood blockbuster to ultra-low budget. 

Alongside his vocation arsenic an actor, Madsen was besides a poet; helium published respective collections including Burning successful Paradise, Expecting Rainˆand an upcoming publication titled Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts and Poems. That publication is presently being edited, his representatives stated. 

With implicit 300 credits to his name, the prolific histrion appeared often successful lower-budget and autarkic films — what Reservoir Dogs began arsenic earlier achieving cult status. According to his representatives, Madsen had spent the years before his death working connected 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 successful a 2014 interview about his affinity toward lesser-known, occasionally non-American productions. "If you're not successful the latest blockbuster, past radical deliberation you've near the planet."

But Madsen's deep, gravelly baritone and endowment for portraying menacing but entrancing atrocious guys reliably drew him backmost to the mainstream. After an aboriginal quality successful 1983's WarGames, his large interruption was a peculiar performance in Reservoir Dogs: his sadistic torture of a captured constabulary serviceman — portion dancing to Stealers Wheel's Stuck successful the Middle with You — arsenic Mr. Blonde successful 1992's Reservoir Dogs.

He would go a Tarantino regular, appearing successful the Kill Bill films arsenic the maniacal Budd and successful The Hateful Eight as the deadly but disarming Joe Gage. During a handprint ceremonial astatine the TCL Chinese Theatre successful November 2020, Madsen reflected connected his archetypal sojourn to Hollywood successful the aboriginal 1980s.

"I got retired and I walked astir and I looked and I wondered if … someday, immoderate way, that was going to beryllium a portion of me. And I didn't know, due to the fact that I didn't cognize what I was going to bash astatine that constituent with myself," helium said. "I could person been a bricklayer. I could person been an architect. I could person been a garbage man. I could person been nothing. But I got lucky. I got fortunate arsenic an actor."