SALON

Wednesday, Jun 6, 2012 4:45 PM UTC

Bad boy Michael Madsen shows his soft side

By

Topics: From the Wires,

PARIS (AP) — There’s more than meets the eye with actor Michael Madsen, known for his cold-blooded and violent roles in films like “Reservoir Dogs.”

In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, Madsen showed his little-seen soft side, saying he writes poetry, loves children and still misses his “inspiring” friend Dennis Hopper, who died of cancer in 2010.

The American actor is in the French capital as the president of the first Champs-Elysees Film Festival that opens Wednesday and runs one week on one of the world’s most famous avenues.

Quentin Tarantino’s 2004 film “Kill Bill 2,” which stars Madsen as Budd, will be screened at the festival, alongside new movies — such as Charlize Theron’s “Snow White and the Huntsman.” The cinematic selection pays homage to American and French film, both mainstream and independent.

A special tribute is also being given to legendary movie producer Harvey Weinstein for his role in bridging U.S. and European cinema with films such as 2011′s “The Artist.”

Madsen, 54, called Weinstein a “genius,” and said he was humbled by being asked to come.

“I mean it’s kind of an honor,” the husky-voiced, tattooed actor said at his Parisian hotel, “People don’t really expect me to be president of a film festival.”

It was a decade after Madsen’s 1982 film debut that he shot to international fame as the violent Mr. Blond in Tarantino’s hit film “Reservoir Dogs.”

Since then, roles in “Sin City” and the critically acclaimed mobster film “Donnie Brasco” have secured his image as one of the meanest guys in Hollywood. But speaking candidly about the infamous “ear” scene in “Reservoir Dogs” — in which he slices off a victim’s ear with a razor — Madsen spoke of how tough it was to play the thug after becoming a father shortly before shooting started on the movie.

During the take, the victim played by Kirk Baltz ad-libbed: “Don’t (kill me) I have children.”

“I just said ‘Oh my God, I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to do it,” said Madsen, adding: “Acting is such a humiliating profession.”

That the reference to children was left in the final cut — albeit in a more subdued version — still “bugged him.”

So is the bad boy finally showing his sensitive side?

Madsen argues that this softer side was there from the beginning, saying that being pure evil is one-dimensional — simply bad acting.

“I’ve always tried to show that. When you play a character that’s quite evil you need to find the nobility in the man.”

In “Kill Bill 2,” he said, it was the former hit man Budd’s love for his cowboy hat that showed his human side. Tarantino didn’t initially want in the movie, but it worked — helping to flesh out Budd’s character.

“I refused to give up my hat, and it made him psychologically affected in the scene when he took it off.”

Aside from his broad film career — he’s starred in 170 features — Madsen is also a published poet. He said he started out writing because film sets “gets so lonely,” scrawling on coasters and even once on his leg.

Things however, got serious when his work got the attention of the late Dennis Hopper, who encouraged his writing and even wrote the forward to the 1998 collection “Burning in Paradise.”

Madsen said he last saw Hopper, who died at age 74, in 2010 when he was given a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

“Dennis joked he’d have to be dying before they gave him a star, and it was true.”

The Champs-Elysees Film Festival runs in Paris June 6 to June 12.

______

Thomas Adamson can be followed at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

More Thomas Adamson.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations