Are You Right There, Michael?
He’s best known for his role in Quentin Tarantino’s seminal Reservoir Dogs, but 54-year-old cult actor Michael Madsen is a complicated and controversial character. In the news last week following an incident which saw him being charged with child cruelty, the actor, writer and poet talks about his chequered past, movies, doing that infamous scene in Reservoir Dogs – but most of all about the importance of family.
Olaf Tyaransen, 04 Apr 2012
Legend has it that you became involved in Steppenwolf Theatre Company at the behest of John Malkovich.
Yeah. A friend of mine and I saw a production of Of Mice And Men. It was Gary Sinise and John Malkovich – Gary was George, and John was Lenny. They were just a basement theatre company and nobody knew any of them or what they were doing. They were just doing it because they loved it. And I remember watching that and at the end of one of their things, I actually walked, I just walked up and across the stage and went down the steps to the back where the dressing-rooms were, and I walked down this hallway and past this one room and I looked in and there was Johnny Malkovich. He said, ‘What are you doing back here?’ and I said I was just wandering around. And he said ‘Are you an actor?’ and I said, ‘No, no, man’ (laughs) and he said, ‘Oh, did you ever think about that?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, crossed my mind I guess...’
He offered you lessons, didn’t he?
Yeah, he said, ‘Well, we have a scene study class, we do here and I’ll send you a brochure if you want to come here and do scene study’. Of course I didn’t believe him, but I gave him my address and he said he was going to send me the brochure. Then he said to me, ‘Did anybody ever tell you you look like Bruce Springsteen?’ I’ll never forget him saying that to me, it was so funny, and I looked at him and I said, ‘No, never heard that one before’ and he said, ‘Well keep that in your mind, you’ve got a good face’.
Obviously he sent you the brochure...
Yeah. About three weeks later, actually on my birthday, on September 25, in my mailbox was a brochure from Steppenwolf with an invite to go there and do scene study. So I kinda thought, ‘Wow that’s pretty bizarre, that’s kinda interesting’, and so I did. Over time the whole story has been blown up, it was the beginning of this and that, but I only stayed there for like three or four months. I got really impatient and I left out of there.
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Olaf Tyaransen
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