Thursday, August 26, 2004

J.T. Walsh Kicked Ass

Salon runs an appreciation of the late character actor J.T. Walsh:
    The intrinsic weight of J.T. Walsh was greater than the sum of his roles -- he was a heavy, and not just in kilos -- an actor who could convey the kind of baritone-black moods that shook the ground like a Panzer with funk in the trunk and who could just as easily refuse to take himself seriously. His hair-raising scariness, when he felt like it, was the same machete edge that made his comic timing so deadly. Maybe he had a prescient sense that he wasn't going to live very long; maybe this gave him a kind of desperate need to be extra, 200 percent, alive and make all his better selves and demons wrestle right on the surface of his eyeballs when he was on-screen.

From there, the article is a film-by-film rundown of Walsh's career, although it oddly omits what I think was his final role, in Pleasantville. Still, it's worth a read if you know who Walsh is.

No comments: