R.I.P. M. Emmet Walsh, character actor extraordinaire

M. Emmet Walsh has died. One of the great character actors of 20th century American cinema, Walsh had small, immediately unforgettable roles in any number of major productions, appearing in movies like Blood Simple, Blade Runner, The Jerk, and literally hundreds more. Comfortable lending his talents to everything from high-concept Shakespeare adaptations to low-budget horror, Walsh was one of those actors whose face became an indelible part of the movie-going experience of millions. Per Variety, his manager confirmed that Walsh died on Tuesday, near his home in Vermont. Walsh was 88.

Starting out in TV (after a stint in acting school in New York), Walsh slowly percolated up into the film scene of the 1970s, scoring early roles in films like Serpico and What’s Up Doc?. He got one of his first major roles (with a character name, and everything) in the 1977 Paul Newman sports comedy Slap Shot, playing a hard-drinking sportswriter who chronicles the unlikely rise of hockey team the Charleston Chiefs. From there, Walsh began to carve out increasingly prominent roles for himself, leveraging an easy knack for small-town gregariousness that worked with, and against, a strain of mischievous madness that always seemed to lurk around the eyes. It’s a mix of charm and wildness that served him as well as the deranged gunman who “hates these cans” in Steve Martin’s The Jerk, and as well-meaning and genuine characters like the swim coach from Ordinary People. Despite appearing low on the call sheet, Walsh had an increasing tendency to act alongside some of the biggest names of the day—Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino—saying in a later interview for the Criterion release of Blood Simple that he developed a reputation for “making the other guy look good.”

Where Walsh excelled, though, were in those roles that deliberately set his charm, and his talent for menace, against each other—the oily police stooge in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, who cheerfully extols Rick Deckard’s skill in “retiring” sentient beings; the cheerful killer Miller in Denzel Washington’s The Mighty Quinn; and most especially Loren Visser, the drawling, greed-driven detective who helps turn the Coen brothers’ first feature, Blood Simple, from a tense drama into an outright bloodbath. Re-watching Walsh’s performance as Visser, it’s easy to see the seeds of so many future Coen villains to come: Amoral, indifferent to human suffering, and undeniably compelling, he completely owns the film with a mixture of evil and buffoonishness. (Meanwhile, hilariously, Walsh was so skeptical of the low-budget production that he refused to take a check from the brothers, insisting on getting his per diem— “The real money in the film for me”—in cash.) The role won Walsh one of the few “official” awards of his career, an Independent Spirit win for Best Male Lead.

Above all else, though, M. Emmet Walsh worked: Looking through his filmography, you can imagine literally hundreds of casting directors wondering how to inject some life and energy into an underwritten flick or episode, and reaching for his card as a sort of emergency out. (In his own words: “If the writing was bad, get Walsh.”) He wasn’t always in good movies, mind you—wasn’t even regularly in good movies, you could argue—but he was almost always the best part of any scene was in, bringing life and energy even to films like Christmas With The Kranks, Camp Nowhere, or Wild Wild West. In fact, he worked right up until this death this year, with at least one film role, in Mario Van Peebles’ Outlaw Posse, arriving in 2024. Other notable parts from the last handful of years included memorable performances in The Righteous Gemstones and Knives Out, with the latter’s director, Rian Johnson, posting a fond remembrance of Walsh on social media today: