M. EMMET WALSH
(22 March 1935 - 19 March 2024)
The American character actor M. Emmet Walsh, who has died aged 88, was a brilliant and iconic performer in films and on TV. Through his charismatic personality, to have him on board in any film or TV series was a definite plus. On his own terms he was something of a star as well as a really versatile actor. He gave memorable performances in such films as At Long Last Love, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Little Big Man, Ordinary People, Brubaker, Reds, The Jerk, and Knives Out – just a few of over 120 films he appeared in. He was also prominent on television, with over 250 appearances, including The Waltons, Bonanza, Ironside, Starsky and Hutch, The Rockford Files, Little House on the Prairie, The X Files, NYPD Blue and Frasier.
Michael Emmet Walsh was born of Irish descent in New York to Agnes Sullivan and her husband, the customs agent Harry Walsh Sr. He was raised in Swanton, Vermont, and graduated from Clarkson University in New York with a B.A. in business administration. However, despite being deaf in one ear due to a mastoid operation, Walsh had taken to the stage while at college and then studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before working in regional theatre for ten years. He made his Broadway debut in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, a play set in a drugs rehabilitation centre. It ran for just under fifty performances, but also introduced Al Pacino, who won a Tony award. Walsh did other stage work, including playing Grandpa Dodge in Sam Shepard’s Burned Child at London’s National Theatre in 2004, although he reckoned he would never play Shaw, Molière or Shakespeare.
Walsh’s main source of training as an actor came in his various bit parts in such films as Midnight Cowboy, Alice’s Restaurant, What’s Up, Doc?, Serpico with Pacino, The Gambler and Airport ‘77. He had rather more to do with Paul Newman in Slap Shot, the ice hockey comedy where he was a miserable small town sports writer Dickie Dunn. In Straight Time he was a parole officer alongside Dustin Hoffman and continued to get bigger and better parts, such as in Blade Runner, although Walsh claimed he didn’t really know what it was all about.
After Mike Nichols’ Silkwood with Meryl Streep, he was cast in Blood Simple, the Coen Brothers debut, a film noir with Walsh as a private detective trailing a woman having a relationship with a bartender employed by her husband. It was a part that suited Walsh immensely and for it he won the first Film Independent Spirit Award. He went on to work with the Coens again on Raising Arizona. Walsh could play anything going from a diving coach in Back to School, a policeman in Critters, a political aide in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, a father-in-law in My Best Friend’s Wedding, a writer in Calvary and he even made Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet as the Apothecary, despite what he said about Shakespeare. His last film appearance was as Catfish in Mario Van Peebles’ Outlaw Posse (2014), a Western with Van Peebles, Whoopi Goldberg and Edward James Olmos.
M. Emmet Walsh had no illusions about his body, his looks or his voice. He knew he would never be cast in a leading role but he created characters that were never less than human, be they dramatic or comic. Stars come and go, but character actors go on for ever. Walsh stayed in his corner from 1968 to 2024 during which there wasn’t a year when he was out of work. He kept going in case the next part was to be his last.
MICHAEL DARVELL