'It was like three hours of nausea,' he says. Tarantino wanted Madsen for the part of Vincent Vega - the part that went to Travolta - but in a decision he rues to this day, Madsen made Wyatt Earp instead, a dreary Western that tanked at the box office. It was Pulp Fiction, however, that proved the pivot to their relationship. 'Oliver Stone wanted me, but the studios offered him an extra $20m to cast Woody Harrelson.' Then in the wake of Dogs, he was tipped for the lead in Natural Born Killers, another Tarantino script. First came True Romance, a Tarantino script, which Madsen tried to get made, but without any success. For years, Madsen might have become De Niro to Tarantino's Scorsese, were it not for a few near misses along the way. ![]() It has been a long 12 years since he worked with Tarantino. He remains a big 6ft 2in, rangy and lantern-jawed, and his signature squint - peering between the rim of his Ray-Bans and his furrowed brow - remains menacingly intact. More dimensional than Mr Blonde, Budd not only harnesses Madsen's gift for violence, he also serves as the social conscience of the movie, a part he's better equipped to play now that he's 46, a little older and weathered. In 'my best role since Reservoir Dogs', Madsen plays the part of Budd, the brother of David Carradine's Bill, whom Uma Thurman has resolved for two movies to kill. ![]() Since it was Tarantino that first thrust him into prominence with Dogs, he now senses a second chance, a shot at reviving 'my once promising career'. So for Madsen, a lot hinges on Kill Bill Vol 2 - nothing less than his resurrection, in fact. 'You get these horrifying straight-to-video things for very little money, then you go to the Cannes Film Festival and they got some poster of you, 40ft high, in the worst movie in the world. There were daisies among the weeds - his portrayal of mobster Sonny Black in Donnie Brasco, for example - but the embarrassments are sometimes the hardest to forget. ![]() It wasn't long before 'the Guy from Reservoir Dogs' - which would make a good epitaph, he jokes - slipped into the quicksand of dismal B-movies as a typecast rent-a-heavy, whittling down what Hollywood stock he had inherited from Mr Blonde. Others were scarcely choices at all.įor years, a combination of Malibu overheads and a draining custody battle with wife number two forced him to grab the first offer on the table rather than patiently plot his ascent to the realms of a Crowe, a Pitt or a Del Toro. Ever since his career-defining Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs - the psychopath who hacks off a cop's ear to the sound of 'Stuck in the Middle With You' - Madsen has floundered, making a series of poor choices. His credits mostly lack quality or clout. Judging from his CV, which shows over 100 credits, Michael Madsen has never wanted for work - rather, he has outworked most of his peers, sometimes making more than 10 films in a year.īut appearances are deceptive. We're going to be living in a trailer park.' If I don't go to work soon, I could lose all this. 'I already let two of my motorcycles go and I sold three of my cars - a Corvette, a little Porsche that I had and a '57 Chevy.' He sighs and shrugs. Besides the whoosh of the Pacific on to his private beach below, all you can hear is his beautiful wife Deanna on the phone in the kitchen, his parrot Marlon squawking merrily downstairs, and Madsen's own quiet, whisky rasp, bemoaning his hard times. ![]() Since the boys are at school (the eldest is 16) the house is relatively quiet. He bought it from Ted Danson, who bought it from Walt Disney's daughter, who bought it from the man who built it - Keith Moon of The Who. It's a great place - bright, white and tall, every wall filled with old movie posters, lovingly framed.
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