Michael Madsen’s brooding charisma needed Tarantino to unlock it

Until 1992, when people heard Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel on the radio, they might smile and nod and sing along to its catchy soft-rock tune and goofy Dylan-esque lyrics. But after 1992, with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s sensationally tense and violent crime movie Reservoir Dogs, the feelgood mood around that song forever darkened. That was down to an unforgettably scary performance by Michael Madsen, who has died at the age of 67.

Stuck in the Middle, with its lyrics about being “so scared in case I fall off my chair”, was to be always associated with the image of Madsen, whom Tarantino made an icon of indie American movies, with his boxy black suit, sinister, ruined handsomeness and powerful physique running to fat, playing tough guy Vic Vega, AKA Mr Blonde. He grooved back and forth across the room, in front of a terrified cop tied to a chair, dancing to that Stealers Wheel number, holding his straight razor, which he had removed from his boot – smirkingly preparing to torture the cop (that is, torture him further) by cutting off his ear.

Related: Michael Madsen, star of Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill and Donnie Brasco, dies aged 67

His Mr Blonde is a nasty piece of work, really without the ironising or humanising touches that Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avary speckle over the rest of the crew; Madsen brought beef and heft to the role and added ballast to the picture, making sure we realise that this was not a collection of snarky suit-wearing hipsters and standup comedians, but serious criminals.

Related: Michael Madsen – a life in pictures

Madsen was to become a repertory player for Tarantino, though turning down the Vincent Vega role in Pulp Fiction (supposedly the brother of his Dogs character; Tarantino once considered bringing them together for a prequel called Double V Vega). Famously, the part went to John Travolta, Madsen having committed himself to Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp, playing Wyatt’s brother Virgil. Perhaps this was serendipitous for Tarantino, because Madsen was a born supporting player. In Kill Bill: Vols 1 and 2, he played the oafish trailer-trash Budd, brother of David Carradine’s intimidating Bill, a one-time member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad who has neglected his warrior vocation and run to seed, having to Bill’s horror even pawned his priceless samurai sword. In Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, he was the creepy and taciturn loner Joe, slouching in the corner of the roadhouse where most of the action is set.

Aside from the Tarantino appearances, Madsen played formidable wiseguy Sonny Black in Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco, deeply suspicious (as in Dogs) of a suspected cop, the pretty-boy newcomer Johnny Depp, sensing that something about him is off – and he himself played a cop (though a ruthless one) in Lee Tamahori’s Mulholland Falls.

In fact, Madsen was to make a living out of playing tough guys in a whole raft of forgettable pictures, sometimes with hardly more than a cameo. Perhaps Madsen could have had a different career – he did after all effectively apprentice as an actor with John Malkovich at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company; his wryly self-aware and self-satirising movie Being Michael Madsen is a nod to Being John Malkovich. Madsen’s mother, Elaine Madsen, was an award-winning documentary film-maker and sister Virginia Madsen is Oscar-nominated for her performance in Alexander Payne’s Sideways. But Michael Madsen found himself typecast in violent roles, despite having played a heartfelt, gentler role in Free Willy, and the broodingly intense poet Tom Baker, Jim Morrison’s friend, in Oliver Stone’s The Doors and he showed tender gallantry as Susan Sarandon’s boyfriend in Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise.

Tarantino unlocked one very powerful side to Madsen – but he had more, and it was sad that somehow he couldn’t show them as much as he wanted. But what natural charisma and presence.