The actor who specialized in offbeat lowlifes
M. Emmet Walsh 1935–2024
Critic Roger Ebert called the actor M. Emmet Walsh “the poet of sleaze.” With his paunchy build, receding hairline, fleshy face, and piercing eyes, Walsh was best known for playing unsavory, off-kilter characters, amassing more than 200 film credits over a six-decade career. Walsh was Dustin Hoffman’s sleazy parole officer in Straight Time (1978), a maniacal sniper firing at Steve Martin (“Die, milkface!”) in The Jerk (1979), and Nicolas Cage’s chatty, gumsmacking machine-shop co-worker in Raising Arizona (1987). He was perhaps best known for playing a crooked private detective hired to catch a cheating spouse in the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple (1984). His ability to shine in small roles led to Ebert’s “Stanton-Walsh Rule”—that no movie “can be altogether bad” that features Walsh or Harry Dean Stanton. “People go and try to become the next Pacino,” said Walsh. “I had to figure out who I was, and what I could do that no one else could do.”
Walsh grew up in rural Vermont, where his father, grandfather, and uncle worked as customs agents on the Quebec border, said The Guardian. He studied business administration at Clarkson University, “but enjoyed acting in university productions,” and at the urging of his faculty adviser moved to New York after graduation. He spent a decade doing regional theater, then in 1969 began earning small movie roles, including one as an “overheated drill sergeant” in Arthur Penn’s Alice’s Restaurant. He got a boost when cast in Straight Time, earning favorable notice and catching the eye of aspiring auteurs Joel and Ethan Coen, who were writing their first feature script. “Blood Simple marked a turning point” for Walsh, said The Hollywood Reporter. The low-budget black comedy won Sundance’s grand jury prize, and Walsh’s chilling performance earned wide praise. “Suddenly, my price went up five times,” he said.
Walsh’s “voracious appetite for roles of every genre” continued through his 70s and 80s, said The Washington Post. He did regional theater, performed dozens of TV roles, and played an elderly security guard in the comic mystery Knives Out (2019). A self-described “low-profile guy” who lived alone in rural Vermont, Walsh acknowledged he’d been in plenty of productions that were “not all Hamlet.” But he disavowed none of it. “The parts are all your children,” he said in 1989. “They’ll be my epitaph when they throw in that last shovelful of dirt.”