Vale: M. Emmet Walsh

Veteran US character actor M. Emmet Walsh, best known for Blade Runner, Blood Simple, My Best Friend’s Wedding has died, aged 88.

His manager Sandy Joseph confirmed that he died on Tuesday in Vermont of cardiac arrest.

In Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner, Walsh was Harrison Ford’s LAPD boss, while he played the vicious private detective Loren Visser in the Coen brothers’ directing debut Blood Simple.

His other roles included the corrupt sheriff in the 1986 horror film Critters and a small role as a security guard in Knives Out.

Walsh appeared in 150 films, including Little Big Man, What’s Up Doc?, Slap Shot, The Jerk, Fletch, Back to School, Raising Arizona and Twilight.

Walsh made his debut in movies in Alice’s Restaurant in 1969.

He was also active on TV, appearing in Sneaky Pete, The Mind of the Married Man and guesting on dozens of series including Frasier, The X-Files, NYPD Blue and The Bob Newhart Show.

“Every time, you [have to] try to figure something individual that works for the character,” Walsh told The Guardian about his private detective in Blood Simple. “If you’re playing a villain, you don’t play villain. … Visser doesn’t think of himself as particularly bad or evil. He’s on the edge of what’s legal, but he’s having a lot of fun with all that. He’s a simple fella trying to make an extra buck and going a little further than he’d normally go in his business enterprises.”

In a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Walsh said he was asked about Blade Runner more than any other movie he had ever made. “We shot down in [Los Angeles’] Union Station,” he recalled. “They set it all up in a little office over in a corner, and we had to be out by five in the morning because commuters were coming in for the train. I don’t know if I really understood what in the hell it was all about.”

Source: Variety