Michael Madsen, 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Kill Bill' star, dies at 67

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.

“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.

This story has been updated to correct Madsen’s age as 67.

FILE - 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)

FILE - Actors Virginia Madsen, left, and her brother Michael Madsen appear at the premiere of "The Astronaut Farmer" in Los Angeles on Feb. 20, 2007. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)

FILE - Michael Madsen attends the 2015 AMBI Gala benefiting The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation on Sept. 9, 2015, in Toronto. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Michael Madsen appears at "The Hateful Eight" press line at Comic-Con International on July 11, 2015, in San Diego. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who as an essential member of the Grateful Dead helped found the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s and kept it alive through decades of tours and marathon jams, has died. He was 78.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” a statement on his Instagram page posted Saturday said. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”

Weir joined the Grateful Dead — originally the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He would spend the next 30 years playing rhythm guitar on virtually nonstop tours alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.

“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” Weir said when the Dead got the Grammys’ MusiCares Person of the Year honor last year. “Spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done.”

Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including “Sugar Magnolia,” “One More Saturday Night” and “Mexicali Blues.”

After Garcia’s death, Weir would be the Dead's most recognizable face. In the decades since, he kept playing with other projects that kept alive the band's music and legendary fan base, including Ratdog, The Other Ones, and Dead & Company.

Weir’s death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member. Founding bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024. The band's other drummer, Mickey Hart, practically an original member since joining in 1967, is also alive at 82. The fifth founding member, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, died in 1973.

Dead & Company, featuring former members and guitarist and singer John Mayer, played a series of concerts for the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in July at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, drawing some 60,000 fans a day for three days.

Born Robert Hall Parber in San Francisco in 1947, Weir would take on the last name of the adoptive parents who raised him in nearby Atherton.

He had dyslexia that went undiagnosed at the time, struggled in school as a child and was kicked out of several institutions. At a Colorado boarding school for boys with behavioral problems, he met his frequent lyricist-collaborator John Perry Barlow.

Weir began playing guitar at age 13 and a few years later met and latched on to Garcia, five years his senior, when he heard him playing banjo in Palo Alto, California.

Weir became the Dead's youngest member and looked like a fresh-faced high-schooler in its early years. He was generally less shaggy than the rest of the band, but he had a long beard like Garcia’s in later years.

The band made its name and forged its identity at the LSD-fueled Acid Tests thrown in San Francisco in the mid-1960s by writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

Their music — called acid rock at its psychedelic inception — incorporated elements of blues, jazz and country in long improvisational jams at concerts.

The band went on to make classic albums including “American Beauty” and “Workingman's Dead,” but the Dead would always be primarily known as a live sensation.

“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” the statement on his Instagram page said. It added that Weir will “forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”

Weir took take a backseat to Garcia, whose face was as much an avatar of the band as its legendary skull logo. At times he would be called “The Other One,” the name of an early song he wrote and the title of a 2014 documentary about him.

“Bob Weir wasn’t The Other One, he was That Guy,” TV personality and devoted Dead fan Andy Cohen said on Instagram on Saturday night. “He was impossibly beautiful and wildly fiery, intense and passionate.”

Others paying tribute included the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, who posted “God Bless Bob Weir” on the social platform X.

In New York, the Empire State Building was lit up in tie-dye colors in his honor.

The band survived long past the hippie moment of its birth, with its ultra-devoted fans known as Deadheads often following them on tours that persisted despite decades of shifting music and culture.

Ubiquitous bumper stickers and T-shirts showed dancing, colored bears, another symbol of the band, and signature phrases like “ain't no time to hate” and “not all who wander are lost.”

The Dead won few Grammys — they were always a little too esoteric — getting only a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and the best music film award in 2018, along with the 2025 MusiCares honor.

Just as rare were hit pop singles. “Touch of Grey,” which brought a big surge in the aging band's popularity in 1987, was their only Billboard Top 10 hit.

But in 2024 they set a record for all artists with their 59th album in Billboard's Top 40. Forty-one of those came since 2012, thanks to the popularity of a series of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux.

Weir also made solo albums, including 1972's “Ace,” 1978's “Heaven Help The Fool” and 2016's “Blue Mountain.”

He is survived by his wife, Natascha, and daughters Monet and Chloe.

FILE - Bob Weir plays guitar with his band The Dead, formerly the Grateful Dead, at the Forum in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles, Calif. on Saturday May 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)

FILE - This undated file photo shows members of the Grateful Dead band, from left to right, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Brent Mydland, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Kennedy Center Honors recipients from left; filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary American rock band the Grateful Dead band members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann Bob Weir and blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist Bonnie Raitt, applaud at at the 2024 Kennedy Center Honors reception in the East Room of the White House, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta,File)

FILE - Bob Weir arrives at Willie Nelson 90, celebrating the singer's 90th birthday on Saturday, April 29, 2023, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. (Photo by Allison Dinner/Invision/AP,File)

FILE - Bob Weir of Dead & Company performs at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Manchester, Tenn. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP,File)