Today, Michael Madsen is a legend, known for his scene-stealing roles in numerous Quentin Tarantino films. Once upon a time, Michael Madsen was a blue-collar auto mechanic from Chicago who inexplicably found himself cast in a bit part in Reservoir Dogs, which remains arguably his most famous role.
Most recently, Madsen shot a Coronavirus-themed PSA in his house, encouraging viewers to stay at home while poking fun at his Mr. Blonde persona from the stylish 1992 crime thriller. He also appears in the documentary, QT8: The First Eight, a new documentary from filmmaker Tara Wood that explores the filmography of Quentin Tarantino, dissecting the myths, legends, and behind-the-scenes machinations that have made Tarantino into Hollywood royalty.
In a phone interview, Madsen spoke to Screen Rant about his life and career, sharing tales from across his filmography and personal life. He talks about the Robert Mitchum film he saw as a child that first sparked the acting bug within him, and how his turbulent and uncertain upbringing prepared him for the Reservoir Dogs came together.
QT8: The First Eight is available now on Digital platforms.
I'm very excited to get to talk to you because, well, I don't really get to talk to anybody anymore!
(Laughs) the crowd, my friend! There's not much to do, it's kinda like being in jail. It's a strange thing, waving at your relatives from car doors. I went to visit my mom, and she just goes out to her porch in her mask, and we waved to her from the car. It's very strange. But I have heard from a lot of people who I haven't heard from in years. People start ing things when they have nothing to do, I guess.
How's your family during this whole thing? We'll get to the PSA in a sec, but how are you and yours coping?
Everybody's doing pretty good. My 14-year-old was happy he didn't have to go to school, but after a while, I think he's realized that his education is much more important than he thought. So he's doing a lot of studying, reading a lot of books, watching a lot of documentaries. We're trying to keep him as busy as possible. I think you start spending a lot of time together, all the time you wish you could have spent with your family. Everybody is so busy all the time, living their lives, and people forget... "Oh, I wish I could stay home and see my kids more," and that's exactly what's happening now. Everybody's getting a lot of family time. I think it's kind of good. If there's an upside to any of it, it's gotta be that. Everybody's bonding and getting to spend a lot more time together. It's not necessarily that bad. Being cooped up is the hard part, but people find things to do. You've gotta stay creative and keep a sense of humor.
Yeah, and we've seen you flex that creativity with your hilarious PSA that we've covered on the site. Whose idea was that in the house?
That was actually my wife's idea. I think I hinted at something, but I didn't really consider it. I thought maybe people would misunderstand it, but then my wife said it would be funny if we did it, and she made all the bandages for everybody... It was my directorial debut, so I figured out how to shoot it with a cell phone, and we did it three or four times before it finally made sense. Everybody was pretty tired at that point. They said, "Dad, do we have to do it again?" (Laughs) It was actually really funny, everybody really enjoyed it. It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of idea. I never imagined it would be going as much as it has. It's crazy, how many people have seen it. I never thought that would happen. But it's kinda nice! Looking back on all this, a year from now, "What did you do during the Coronavirus quarantine?" Well, we made a funny video about Reservoir Dogs.
And it's so important, when you have a platform like you do, being, you know, Michael Madsen, if you can get people to actually stay inside and not wind up in the hospital or putting others in the hospital, that's great!
You know, the thing is, because I've played a lot of characters who are, um, a bit violent, I think people have a misguided picture of me as a person. You know, I'm just an actor. And I thought it was funny to make fun of something like that, maybe show a lighter side of things. I had that kind of opportunity, which I rarely do.
It's funny that you mention that, because for me, and maybe lots of people my age, I'm 29, and the first thing I ever saw you in was Free Willy.
Not many people say that, but that's cool! A lot of people forget that. I like that picture a lot. It was the lighter side of Michael Madsen, the real Michael Madsen, because I am a father. I have five sons. Playing that part was probably, more like me than anything else I've ever done. I did the second one, and thank God I didn't do the third one! The original was pretty good, it was a damn good movie. It holds up. I saw it at The Egyptian Theater for a charity thing, on a big screen, and it really holds up. A lot of pictures don't hold up over time, but Free Willy is one for the ages.
I want to talk about your career before you met Quentin, and kinda leading off with that, you were in an episode of my all-time favorite show, Miami Vice.
Yeah! That was a lot of fun. It was in Miami. I was actually working at a gas station back then. I was working at the Union 76 in Beverly Hills. I was from Chicago, and I was trying to get acting jobs, and I had no idea what I was doing, but I got an episode of Miami Vice! I did a Cagney & Lacey, I did a St. Elsewhere, and I'm pretty sure I was driving a Cadillac in Miami Vice, a blue Cadillac, wasn't it?
Yup!
I was Sally Alvarado, I think was my name.
Good recall!
Those guys were great. That was a different world back then. But running around in Miami was a pretty good time, as I . I used to play a lot of "heavies," a lot of episodic TV bad guys.
You were a working actor, you were pulling down a day job while following your dream, and you did that for a while. Was there a moment, even before Reservoir Dogs, where you felt like you had arrived, that you had "made it?"
I was an auto mechanic in Chicago. I was a big fan of old movies. Westerns and Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, and all those guys from back in the day, that was my thing. I didn't know I was going to be an actor. I had no notion of actually being able to do that. I was a blue collar kid from Chicago. My father was a firefighter. My mother was a writer. What chance did I have of ever doing something like that? But then I accidentally got a part in a movie called WarGames, and that was the first thing I ever did. I'm a soldier in a missile silo at the very beginning of the movie. It's a Matthew Broderick picture... That was a long time ago. (Laughs) I was going to school to be a paramedic, and a friend of mine was an actor in my class, and he took me to an audition he was going to. I just went in with him accidentally because we were hanging out. I didn't even read for the people who were there, but I met Martin Brest, who was there, and he must have been 25 years old, I guess. He asked me if I had any idea of ever being an actor. I thought it was a ridiculous question and I didn't know how to respond, but I got invited to California to play the soldier in that missile silo because of that chance meeting. So when I got to California, obviously, I wasn't going to leave. I figured, "I'd might as well stay here," and I got a job pumping gas in Beverly Hills. So that's what I was doing because I didn't want to go back to Chicago. I figured, if the acting thing didn't work out, I could figure out something else. Driving a tow truck was enough to pay my rent, but one thing led to another, and I started getting episodic TV.
That's an incredible attitude, like, you're on the road, and wherever that road goes, you're gonna follow it. Do you have, like, I don't know, a "zen" approach to life like that, or does it just happen to work out that way?
Well, you know, my parents divorced when I was a little kid, and we moved an awful lot. We were always moving. I was always the new kid in the neighborhood. I started school in the middle of the year and that sort of thing. It does have an effect on you. It does turn you into a bit of a loner. It doesn't do much for your trust of other people, that's for sure (laughs), or your beliefs in things that are sacred. It's not Father Knows Best, and it's sure as hell not The Brady Bunch. Those are bizarre fantasy TV, nobody's ever had that life. I was always running around somewhere, and it just seemed natural to me. When I started making pictures, my God, I've been all over the world now, and that's half the fun of it, the travel part. I've made movies in a lot of different countries, in a lot of states, and I enjoy that part of it, I always did. It's a better part of the experience, a better part of what I do.
There are a lot of people who wind up famous for whatever reason, but there's a real trajectory with your path to stardom.
It's a learning curve. The industry is not the genius you might think or anticipate. Because I didn't know what I was doing, I had to learn a lot of things the hard way. Movies are movies, and some of them are good and some of them are not. The recipe for it is hard to get right, sometimes. I've been lucky with the people I've met, the pictures I've made, and the people I've worked with, but it's a double life. You're away a lot. It's hell on the personal life. It's a tricky thing to do. It's very seductive in a lot of ways. You have to be careful or it can get the better of you.
Do you feel like you're at peace with the Hollywood machine? Do you know which parts to take and which ones to , or is it always a gamble when you sign up?
It's funny you should ask that. Ever since this Covid-19 thing, as long as it's been going on, I've had a lot of time to think about a lot of things. You know, I think I am. I think I'm very comfortable now. I think I'm smarter than I was. I think I've been around long enough to know what I know and what I don't. I've made peace with it, of course, yeah. There was a long time that I didn't, that's for sure. But it's different now. I'm not a kid anymore, and my sons are grown up... I'm looking for particular things. I know what kinds of pictures I want to make. But they're hard to find. Quentin Tarantino doesn't show up every day! I know what characters I can play, and the things I can do at this point, but it's hard to find it. It's even harder to wait around when you're broke and trying to pay your rent, you know?
Oh, I know a bit about that!
It's a fact, you know, you have to be careful. Your family comes first. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to do a project or a movie that you'd rather not do. But if you have to go to set to put groceries in the refrigerator, it's not hard to make up your mind.
You've gotta do what you've gotta do, yes. Okay, let's go back to you meeting Quentin, all those years ago. I mean, I'm sure you've been over this a million times, but...
Not really, I mean, yes and no. I haven't done a lot of this sort of interview stuff. The things I have done, I'm usually pretty careful about what I talk about. But whatever you want to know, it's what I'm here for, so go ahead!
Sure, I mean, you've given me so many great stories already, I feel like you could have your own podcast!
Well, ya know... Tell somebody. Let's start one next week. I'm ready.
Can you tell me about seeing that script for Reservoir Dogs? Did you know that movie was going to be something special, or was it just like any other role?
I had worked with Harvey Keitel on Thelma & Louise. So me and him were already buddies. What I found out he was playing Mr. White, that was the attraction, besides it being one of the best scripts I had ever ready in my life up to that point. I knew it was something special. I knew it was something different. But nobody knew Quentin Tarantino. Nobody. I had never even met him. I think it was a bunch of guys who got together and we were all trying to be cool because we all wanted to be cool like Harvey Keitel. Steve and Tim and Me and Chris, we hadn't really been around that much. To put us all together in a movie like that, that's all from the mind of Quentin. He wrote that thing. Not only that, but he wrote True Romance and Natural Born Killers, and he sold those when he was working at a video store, just to pay his rent. To be able to be in the first movie he was given the money to make and direct, was quite the privilege. None of us knew what the heck we were doing. We were just making a gangster movie and playing these tough guys in black suits. I don't think any of us had any idea it was going to turn out the way it did.
I bet he did, though!
Quentin is in Israel now, and I've been in touch with him lately. One of the things I ire about Quentin is, he has a plan. He has a plan for his life. He had a plan for the movies he wanted to make and the things he wanted to do. I don't know how many people actually have a plan in their head. Everybody goes, "I want to do this," and "I want to do that," but he's the one guy who actually had an idea and a plan to go forward. Of course, he did. He knew everything he was going to do. And he's done it all in exactly the way he wanted to do it. A lot of people doubted him along the way. It's gotten to the point where you really can't criticize him about anything anymore. He's made a great career for himself and done a great service to cinema.
Definitely. Okay, you're on the set of Reservoir Dogs. You say he's got a plan, so as an actor, is there comparatively less room to develop your character beyond his vision? Does he have everything mapped out exactly?
He's not a dictator. You have to respect him because he knows what he's doing, but there was room, at least for me, to make things up, to bring your own ideas to certain things. I never rehearsed the ear thing, any of that. I didn't know what I was going to do. It said in the script, "Mr. Blonde maniacally dances around the manacled cop." I had no idea what that meant, what I was going to do. And we had a week or ten days of rehearsal before we started shooting anything. And the DP, Andrzej Sekula, had everything blocked out, camera-wise. We rehearsed the whole thing in a warehouse. We had chalk marks on the ground where everybody was supposed to stand. Everybody kind of knew, physically, where we were going to be. But every time we got to that particular scene, I honestly did not know what to do. I said, "Quentin, listen, I don't know what I'm going to do." And he said, "Okay, Michael, let's just wait until the day." Which was great news for me, because it gave me more time to think about it. Honestly, we never did do it until the day that we actually shot it. I didn't know what the film was going to do. I just wanted to know what my parameters were, like, where in the room was I given the freedom to move around. And, of course, I had to get the blade out of my boot, but the only reason I had boots on was because everybody was supposed to wear black shoes, and I didn't have any black shoes! (Laughs) So I came to work with those cowboy boots, which seemed like the logical place to keep a straight razor. There were little things like that, which weren't scripted. Quentin lets things happen a certain way. It's amazing to watch him. He's very smart, he's very decisive, and if he doesn't like something, he's gonna tell you, "Don't do that." But if you're doing something that works, he lets it happen. It's a great director who gives you that freedom.
Was it always going to be Stealers Wheel? Did you always know what song it was going to be? Was it playing on set?
I wanted to know what the song was going to be, and he told me that was the one he wanted. I had so much anxiety about the whole thing, I asked him, "Can you play it for me? It would really help me enormously if you played it for me, so that I could hear that while I was doing everything." So they did. They got a boombox and put it on there, and they queued it up when I'm down there looking at Tim's bloody coat, and as soon as I heard it, I stood up and... That's exactly what happened. Like I said, I had no idea what I was going to do. I was kind of pressured into it, but thank God I came up with something. I kept expecting to hear him yell, "Cut!" I didn't know how I was going to get away away with that! I thought I was gonna hear, "Cut! Cut! Michael, what are you doing?!" But I went with it, and I figured, oh, this must be working! It was just off the top of my head. I was thinking about James Cagney. I had seen James Cagney in an old movie, I think it was Yankee Doodle Dandy, or one of those pictures where he does some dancing. And I couldn't think of anybody else. For some reason, Cagney came into my head for that particular scene. Not that I was anywhere near his dancing capabilities, but I sort of was thinking of him when I came up with that... I don't think I've ever told anybody that before, but there you go.
Now that you say it, I can totally see that. Jimmy Cagney had that special energy as an actor where he did gangster movies and cop movies like The G-Men, but then jolly musicals like Yankee Doodle Dandy. Kinda, like, put them together, and that's Mr. Blonde!
Could you imagine if he started dancing in White Heat?
I can, and it would have been you!
It would have been something like that, right?
For sure! Over the years, you've become friends with Quentin Tarantino, to the point where, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, you're credited as part of "The Gang," which I thought was so great.
I'm glad I qualified!
When you're talking with him as a friend, do you bounce ideas with him, or is that a segregated thing, like, "Hey, when we're working, we're working, and when we're hanging out, we're hanging out?"
We're in touch with each other. We have been, from the very beginning. Quentin is a guy who doesn't forget things, and he reaches out when you least expect it. But we talk endlessly about old movies and old TV shows, characters and actors we have the same feeling about. We have a similar iration for Lee Marvin and Robert Mitchum. Actors from that era who I grew up watching, he has that same idea about them. That's why he puts so many people in his movies who haven't been around for a while. I mean, look what he did for Robert Forster. He'll reach back and grab somebody like that, and give them a whole new life, a whole new career. He's an encyclopedia of knowledge. There's no genre of film he doesn't know about. There's no movie that's ever been made that he hasn't either seen or knows who's in it and how it got done. It's incredible. He's a walking encyclopedia of cinema history. We usually get to talking about that, all the time. He's wonderful that way. He loves making movies, he loves talking about them, and he's been a great friend to me besides being a director. He's seen me through a lot of things in my personal life. And now he's a father, so we have that to look forward to in common to talk about in the future. I can't wait to see his kid. It's wonderful that he's become a father.
I'm so glad you mentioned Robert Mitchum. I always thought, his performance in Thunder Road is something you would have done if you were born 50 years earlier.
Yeah, I honestly, that movie, and him, he was one of the first guys who ever gave me an idea that I could be an actor. I saw a picture he did called Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, directed by John Huston. He plays a marine stuck on an island occupied by the Japanese. Deborah Kerr is in it. But it was just so wonderful, that movie. I just sitting on the floor at my mom's sister's house, watching that as a little boy on a black and white RCA television. I seeing that movie and it being the first time it ever crossed my mind to be an actor. I understood what he was doing. I figured it out. Him and Humphrey Bogart. I would watch them and think, you know, that guy is probably a lot like that in real life, because there are certain things that are just not actable. They just aren't. A lot of those guys from then, like Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, these guys were just like that. They had that personality. Anthony Quinn was an incredible example of something like that. He was just that guy. That's how I figured acting was. It wasn't a mystery, just the perception of putting your own self in the situation. If you put yourself in the circumstance of the character you're playing, it's another side of you that's coming out. That's what I learned from those guys. If you see Lee Marvin in Point Blank, you know, he was probably kind of like that guy more than... (Laughs) You can't be that good of an actor, I'm sorry!
He had his demons.
I think you get the permission to play that if you're an actor, since you can't do those things in your day to day life, but you can sure as hell pretend. I've been around a long time, and I've had quite the education, growing up with those kinds of actors. There aren't actors like them anymore. It's a whole new generation. Those guys aren't around anymore. They were a product of a different time, a different world. Movies are different. Everything's different. It's a whole different story!
QT8: The First Eight is available now on Digital platforms.
