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The cause was cardiac arrest, said his manager, Sandy Joseph.
In a career spanning more than half a century and 200 film and television roles, Walsh is credited with elevating even the most mundane comedies and dramas with his compelling performances as troubled everymen, corrupt authority figures, sadists, Intense weirdos and absolute maniacs. . A typical M. Emmet Walsh character, USA Today film critic Mike Clark once wrote, was “a cesspool in a floral shirt.”
With his paunchy physique, receding hairline, ruddy, embarrassed face and flat but chilling cadence, Mr. Walsh straddled the line between the ordinary and the memorably out of place. His skill, in often fleeting roles, was to advance the plot and then return to his place in the background of the action.
In the process, he became one of Hollywood’s most sought-after and recognizable supporting actors. Facing such charismatic stars as Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman and Will Smith, Walsh said he tried to energize the moment without trying to upstage the star.
“What makes it interesting for the audience is that I hit the ball and the other person hits it back and you keep hitting it harder and harder and heads go back and forth,” he told the Houston Chronicle.
“Whether it’s Mr. Redford, Pacino or Hackman, once they see I’m there, they won’t let me win that tennis match,” Mr. Walsh continued. “We hit the ball very hard. That’s why they brought me. These guys get up and start punching, and I punch, and suddenly you have a scene that works.”
After spending years acting on stage and in small roles on screen, Walsh got a significant break playing a cruel parole officer to Hoffman’s ex-convict in the crime drama “Exact time”(1978).
The following year, in “The Jerk,” he played the rifle-wielding nutcase who chooses his victims based on his dislike of their names. He literally takes aim at Navin R. Johnson, an innocent gas station attendant played by Steve Martin, but his aim is so bad that he continually hits cans of motor oil, prompting Martin’s line: “He hates these cans!”
Mr. Walsh was a cynical sportswriter in “Slap Shot” (1977), was a strict swimming coach in the Oscar-winning family drama “Ordinary people(1980), he played Harrison Ford’s police chief in the futuristic sci-fi thriller “Bounty hunter(1982), he was a boogie-woogie pianist in “Row of preserves(1982) and was director of the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in “silk wood(1983).
Walsh took on a notably small role in “red(1981) as a member of the Liberal Club featuring Warren Beatty’s left-wing journalist John Reed. “I did it because I wanted Warren to have the experience of working with me!” he told the Austin American-Statesman. “I said, ‘I want you to know I’m here, because Jack Warden won’t always be available.’”
During a three-week break from filming “Silkwood” in Dallas, Walsh flew to Austin to make a low-budget independent noir drama directed by two first-time filmmakers, Joel and Ethan Coen. The film was “simple blood(1984), in which he played the saccharine private detective hired by a Texas roadhouse owner (Dan Hedaya) to kill his unfaithful wife (Frances McDormand) and her lover (John Getz).
Walsh played the Southern detective, under a sweaty cowboy hat and a mustard-colored casual suit, as an homage to the obese 1940s actor Sydney Greenstreet, who specialized in greedy, untrustworthy schemers. New York film critic Pauline Kael described Walsh as the “only colorful actor” in the film. He builds on the disgusting, but gives it a little twist: a sporty touch.” The film won the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and launched the Coen brothers as filmmakers.
Working again with the Coens, in the film “Raising Arizona(1987), Walsh took on a small role as Nicolas Cage’s mechanic’s shop co-worker who pops pink gum while recounting finding a friend’s head after a car accident: “There’s a spherical object resting on the road.” . And it is not a part of the car.”
In addition to his work in comedy-mystery “Fletch” (1985), was a diving coach in Rodney Dangerfield’s comedy “Back to School” (1986), John Lithgow’s father in “Harry and the Hendersons” (1987), Michael Keaton’s Alcoholics Anonymous counselor (a rare role in decent man) in “Clean and sober” (1988) and a murderous US government agent who tries to prevent the investigation of a Caribbean police chief (Washington) in “The Mighty Quinn” (1989).
In 1996, Mr. Walsh was a defense psychologist in the courtroom drama “Time to kill” and played the apothecary in director Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, “Romeo + Juliet.” Film critic Roger Ebert posited the Stanton-Walsh rule: “no film featuring Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be entirely bad,” but he admitted that not even Mr. Walsh could save the failure that was “wild wild west(1999), a western with Smith.
For Walsh, the beauty of being a high-profile character actor was that he earned a generous salary (he once said he earned more than the president) while avoiding the pressure of carrying a movie.
“It’s a good life being a character actor,” he told the Orange County (California) Register. “I have been close to stardom. I’ve been around Redford and Hoffman and it’s scary. That drive for stardom is like the greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit. When he catches him, he is too tired to keep running and you have to shoot him.”
Michael Emmet Walsh, known as Mike to his family and friends, was born in Ogdensburg, New York, on March 22, 1935, and grew up in Swanton, Vermont. His father was a U.S. customs agent and his mother was a housewife.
He graduated from the private Tilton School in New Hampshire. At his father’s urging, he majored in business administration at Clarkson College of Technology (now a university) in Potsdam, New York, and barely passed his classes while excelling as a college golfer and appearing in student plays.
He graduated in 1958, but not before the dean of students called him, he said, to inform him that the school ranked him among the least promising graduates in recent memory. Fearing an office career, he enrolled in a two-year program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.
To make connections, she played in the Broadway softball league. In one game, the then-unknown Redford played first base for him and playwright Neil Simon covered second. “I’m a kid right out of acting school,” he told the Arizona Republic, “and I’m yelling, ‘Come on, Simon, get your ass in.'”
After graduating from the academy, Walsh worked as a prop man at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and spent the next decade performing off-Broadway, in summer movies and commercials.
He made his Broadway debut with a small role in “Does a Tiger Wear a Tie?” (1969), a short play about drug addicts that earned newcomer Pacino a Tony Award. Over the next few years, Walsh had supporting roles in era-defining films such as “midnight cowboy“, “Alicia Restaurant“, “little big man,” “What’s new old man?,” “Serpico” and “Bound for Glory.”
Mr. Walsh’s voracious appetite for roles of all genres continued throughout his later years. He performed on regional theater stages from Washington to San Diego, appearing in plays by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, and in 2004 won acclaim for his performance in a revival of Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child” at the National Theater in London.
On screen, he played elderly security guard Mr. Proofroc in the murder mystery “Knives out(2019) and lent his voice to the Cosmic Owl in the children’s cartoon “Adventure Time”.
Walsh leaves no immediate survivors.
“I have more fun playing 10 different people than I do playing the same person 10 different times,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “One time he’s a garbage collector and the next he’s the president of Princeton. Sometimes Princeton is not very happy, but I have a good time figuring out what I can do.”