M. Emmet Walsh, the King of the “Character Actors”

The term “character actor” is one lined with pitfalls and potentially negative connotations. After all, aren’t all actors playing characters? Even if, like Tom Cruise (no offense intended in the slightest) they are often playing a version of a particular character repeatedly?

The phrase is further complicated because it’s often meant to refer to supporting actors—you know, the ones who can’t cut it as leads, but can add some spice and variety to the production. At the same time, if one thinks of leading actors like Denzel, Blanchett, Nicholson, Streep, DeNiro, Pacino (I could do this for a while), are those folks not insanely flexible thespians? Ones who add significant spice and variety over the bulk of their careers? I would say “yes” without hesitation.

But the kind of “character actor” I’m writing about today, is that first kind: the one who rarely gets the lead, but as soon as they show up on screen, you can feel the level of the project instantly lift. Maybe it’s their eccentricities and peculiarities that cinch the deal. They are the ultimate in the “hey, I liked that guy in that one movie” type of actor. I’m speaking of folks like the late great JT Walsh, the departed Tom Sizemore, Diana Venora, Tom Noonan, Michael Gaston, Julie-Anne Emery, and a host of others whose names might not be instantly familiar, but their work sticks to your ribs, even when you can’t exactly place them perfectly.

Which brings me to a sort of king in the history of the “character actor”: M. Emmet Walsh. Walsh always had a peculiar way about him. He had a soft, somewhat high voice that could seem gentle, but there was a shiftyness in both his phrasing and his gaze that often made who he was playing a person of questionable trust. He’s also one of those actors that were afflicted with what I call “Burgess Meredith” disease. It’s as if they were born at 50–skipping over puberty, adolescence, and going straight to wizened adulthood (Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman are also good examples). That instant quality of age and experience coupled with a semi-charming duplicity were Walsh’s stock and trade, and few ever did it better.

Walsh’s six decade career started in 1968-69. Walsh gave a couple of one episode performances on TV and was “bus passenger” in Midnight Cowboy. Over the next 55 years, Walsh worked relentlessly (as his 233 film and TV credits will attest). He showed up in small parts in movies memorable for both good reasons and less so.

Walsh’s pure volume of credits are breathtaking to consider, but looking at the plus side of the ledger will make your head spin:

Alice’s Restaurant

Little Big Man

What’s Up Doc?

Serpico

The Gambler

Bound for Glory

Mikey and Nicky

Slap Shot

Straight Time

The Jerk

Ordinary People (in which he played a swim coach)

Reds

Blade Runner

Silkwood

The Pope of Greenwich Village

Fletch

Back to School (in which he played a swim coach again!)

Raising Arizona

Clean and Sober

The Music of Chance

The Glass Shield

A Time to Kill

Romeo + Juliet

My Best Friend’s Wedding

Knives Out

All films of sizable significance. And even though in many of them, Walsh may have only had a single scene or just a few lines, what he added in those brief moments was a feeling of authenticity.

I also loved him in more lightly regarded fare like the Willem Dafoe thriller White Sands, the just waiting to be discovered island detective mystery The Mighty Quinn starring Denzel Washington, Wildcats—the silly Goldie Hawn high school football movie (that also featured a pre-White Men Can’t Jump Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson), The Best of Times (another football comedy, this one with Robin Williams and Kurt Russell), or a personal favorite of mine—the wonderfully goofy astrology meets pro basketball film starring Julius “Dr. J” Erving, The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh.

He could also liven up trash like nobody’s business either. The Rambo-like cheapie Missing in Action starring Chuck Norris, or the incredibly seedy Fast-Walking with James Woods were greatly aided by his presence. As good as Walsh was in high class films, he was often even more essential to the lesser films he was in. His quiet-voiced malevolence, that slow almost whispery drawl, and that sense that he was always a bit behind on his hygiene made even the worst films he was associated with (Airport ‘77, At Long Last Love, Red Scorpion) a little more tolerable—at least while he was in front of the camera doing M. Emmet Walsh things.

Being a heavy man, with a rapidly declining hairline, and a voice that lent itself to scurrilous types, Walsh almost never got a lead role—with one very notable exception: The Coen Brothers masterful debut, the great modern film noir, Blood Simple.

While Walsh may not have quite been the lead on Blood Simple, I hazard to guess that he never had another part quite so large or meaningful as the morally flexible private eye Loren Visser, a man charged with uncovering whether a bar owner’s (played Dan Hedaya) wife (Frances McDormand in her breakout role) is carrying on with the help (played by Jon Getz). Once Visser confirms the affair with his client, the bar owner eventually hires Visser to kill his wife and her lover.

A series of missteps and misunderstandings leads to one of the great film noir climaxes in recent history between Walsh and McDormand’s characters. No fair saying more to those who have not seen it, but let’s just say that Walsh’s final blood-soaked, dark-humored line isn’t just beautifully written, but perfectly delivered.

Earlier in the movie there is another line of dialogue that Walsh speaks like it was meant only for him. As the bar owner and Walsh’s private dick are discussing venturing into dangerous territory, their back and forth goes like so:

Visser: “Well, if the pay’s right, and it’s legal, I’ll do it.”

Bar owner: “It ain’t exactly legal.”

Visser: “Well, if the pay’s right, I’ll do it.”

Thinking back on those words makes me smile and chuckle a bit. The line is brilliantly delivered (as all Walsh lines were), but it also struck me as a solid summation of Walsh’s career. He was a working actor. If “the pay was right,” he’d do it. And when he did it, he did it like no other.