https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/movies/m-emmet-walsh-dead.html

M. Emmet Walsh, Character Actor Who Always Stood Out, Dies at 88

His roles in films like “Knives Out” and “Blade Runner” were sometimes
big, sometimes small. But he invariably made a strong impression.

By Matt Twomey
Published March 20, 2024
Updated March 21, 2024, 1:44 a.m. ET
M. Emmet Walsh, a paunchy and prolific character actor who was called “the
poet of sleaze” by the critic Roger Ebert for his naturalistic portrayals
of repellent lowlifes and miscreants, died on Tuesday in St. Albans, a
small city in northern Vermont. He was 88.

His death, in a hospital, was announced by his manager, Sandy Joseph.

The most enduring praise Mr. Walsh received also came from Mr. Ebert: He
coined the Stanton-Walsh Rule, which asserted that “no movie featuring
either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be
altogether bad.”

In “Straight Time,” a 1978 film featuring both Mr. Stanton and Mr. Walsh,
Mr. Walsh played a patronizing parole officer to Dustin Hoffman’s
teetering ex-con. Mr. Walsh’s performance caught the eye of two brothers
who aspired to be auteurs and were writing their first feature-film
script.

The unknown Joel and Ethan Coen wrote the pivotal character of a detective
in “Blood Simple” for Mr. Walsh. To their surprise, and despite offering
little more in compensation than a per diem stipend, he accepted the role.

Reviewing “Blood Simple” for The New York Times in 1984, Janet Maslin said
that Mr. Walsh had captured “a mischievousness that is perfect for the
role.” Writing in Salon on the occasion of the release of Janus Films’
digital restoration in 2016, Andrew O’Hehir praised Mr. Walsh’s portrayal
of a “sleazy, giggly and profoundly disturbing private detective.”

On the set, he took pleasure in hazing the neophyte directors. “Let’s cut
this sophomoric stuff, it’s not N.Y.U. anymore,” Joel Coen recalled him
saying, according to a Times article in 1985. “One time I asked him to do
something just to humor me, and he said, ‘Joel, this whole damn movie is
just to humor you.’”

After the film’s critical success — Mr. Walsh won the first Independent
Spirit Award for best performance by an actor — the Coen brothers brought
Mr. Walsh back for a cameo in their second movie, “Raising Arizona.”

Also in that movie, in addition to Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter, was John
Goodman, who went on to become a Coen Brothers regular — while Mr. Walsh
did not. With Mr. Goodman on board, Mr. Walsh said in an interview for the
Janus Films edition of “Blood Simple,” “their casting needs didn’t involve
me anymore.”

Michael Emmet Walsh was born on March 22, 1935, in Ogdensburg, N.Y. His
father, Harry Maurice Walsh Sr., was a customs agent on the Vermont-Quebec
border; his mother, Agnes Katherine (Sullivan) Walsh, ran the household.

Mr. Walsh was raised in rural Swanton, Vt., and attended nearby Clarkson
University in northern New York State, earning a bachelor’s degree in
business administration while dabbling in stage productions.

“I had a good faculty adviser up there who said, ‘Why wait to be 40 to
wonder whether you should have been an actor? Get rid of it now, or find
out!’” Mr. Walsh said in a 2011 interview at the Silent Movie Theater in
Los Angeles. “So I went to New York.”

He was schooled in acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and
also, less formally, in New York theaters. Unable to afford tickets, he
would slip in amid the crowd at intermission.

“There was always an empty seat. And you see everything!” he said. “I saw
Annie Bancroft do ‘Miracle Worker’ with Patty Duke, probably 40 times;
‘Raisin in the Sun’ with Sidney Poitier. And I just watched them.”

Deaf in his left ear since a mastoid operation when he was 3 years old,
and with a clipped Vermont accent, Mr. Walsh said, “It was obvious I
wasn’t going to do Shaw and Shakespeare and Molière — my speech was simply
too bad.”

“People go and try to become the next Pacino," he continued, “or the next
Meryl Streep or something — they don’t want that. They want something new,
something different — they want you! And actors have a hard time figuring
that out. So I had to figure out who I was and what I could do, that no
one else could do.”

He performed in regional theaters throughout the Northeast for most of a
decade, then made his Broadway debut in “Does a Tiger Wear a
Necktie?” (1969), starring Al Pacino.

A few parts in television commercials led to an uncredited role in
“Midnight Cowboy” that same year. He then landed the part of the irate and
incomprehensible Group G Army sergeant in Arthur Penn’s screen adaptation
of Arlo Guthrie’s song “Alice’s Restaurant.”

Then came about 120 movie roles over the next five decades, and even more
television parts. The critics took notice: He was a “cynical small-town
sportswriter” in “Slap Shot” (1977), a “bonkers sniper” in “The
Jerk” (1979), a “hard-drinking, sleazy and underhanded police veteran” in
“Blade Runner” (1982) and an “unsympathetic swimming coach” in “Ordinary
People” (1980).

In a 2011 profile for L.A. Weekly, the critic Nicolas Rapold called Mr.
Walsh “a consummate old pro of the second-banana business.”

“My job is to come in and move the story along,” he said in the Silent
Movie Theater interview. “The stars don’t do the exposition … So I come on
with Redford or Newman or Dustin or somebody, and I throw the ball to
them, and they throw it back, and it starts to become that tennis match,
back and forth, and that’s what makes the dynamics of the whole thing.”

“And I’m driving the movie forward,” he added. “They don’t want an Emmet
Walsh. They want a bus driver. They want a cop. They don’t want an Emmet
Walsh cop. I just try to sublimate myself and get in there and do it.”

Mr. Walsh had confidence in his ability to deliver, and he knew how
valuable that was to harried filmmakers. “You’re casting something, and
you’ve got 12 problems; if they’ve got me, they only have 11 problems.”

He said that directors sought him out for his ability to elevate subpar
material. “They’d say, ‘This is terrible crap — get Walsh. At least he
makes it believable.’ And I got a lot of those jobs.”

Reviews reflected that. Mr. Walsh was often singled out in otherwise
forgettable films — for a “good individual performance” in “The Fish That
Saved Pittsburgh” (1979), as a “dependable talent” in “The Best of
Times” (1986).

That is not to say he never had a miss; his performance in “Wild, Wild
West” (1999) prompted Mr. Ebert to deem the Stanton-Walsh Rule
“invalidated.”

In 2018, Mr. Walsh’s “Blade Runner” co-star, Harrison Ford, inducted him
into the Character Actor Hall of Fame. At that same ceremony, he was
honored with the Chairman’s Lifetime Achievement award.

He continued acting in recent years, including in the 2019 movie “Knives
Out” and in a 2022 episode of the Showtime series “American Gigolo.”

Mr. Walsh leaves no immediate survivors. He lived in St. Albans and in
Culver City, Calif.

Of his own body of work, he told the comedian Gilbert Gottfried in a 2018
episode of his podcast: “There’s a lot of stuff out there. They’re not all
‘Hamlet.’ But I’m not ashamed of any of it.”

“The parts are all your children,” Mr. Walsh said in a 1989 interview with
the trade newspaper Drama-Logue. “They’ll be my epitaph when they throw in
that last shovelful of dirt.”