Michael Madsen has run the gamut from the hippest of cult films to the biggest studio blockbusters in his career. He is probably best known for his hard-edged roles in genre films, including: the ear-slicing Mr. Blonde in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, a Mafia family capo in Donnie Brasco, a hard-core Special Ops officer in Species and, most recently, the deadly Sidewinder in Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 2. Yet, displaying his versatility, Madsen has also portrayed a lovable and caring father in Free Willy; starred as Susan Sarandon's supportive, understanding boyfriend in Thelma and Louise; and brought the gentle Virgil Earp to life opposite Kevin Costner in Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp. He also recently joined Parker Posey and Adam Goldberg in the USA series Frankenstein with producer Martin Scorsese, author Dean Koontz and director Marcus Nispel. He currently can be seen as the lead in ESPN's pokerthemed dramatic series Tilt.

Forthcoming films include the horror thriller Bloodrayne, the action adventure The Last Drop and the crime drama Chasing Ghosts. Madsen will also star in Larry Bishop's biker film Hell Ride with Quentin Tarantino.

Born in Chicago, Madsen and his two siblings, including actress Virginia Madsen, were reared in a closeknit family environment. He entered the world of acting after seeing Of Mice and Men at Chicago's fabled Steppenwolf Theater. Following stints painting houses, repairing cars, working as an orderly in a hospital, and pumping gas, Madsen moved to Los Angeles and began landing guest spots on Miami Vice, Cagney and Lacey, St. Elsewhere and other TV series.

Madsen made his feature debut in the thriller hit War Games in 1983, and went on to appear in The Natural, War and Remembrance and The Doors, while coming to national prominence with his roles in Thelma and Louise and the highly influential Reservoir Dogs. He has played a deviant killer in The Getaway with Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin; the psycho killer in John Dahl's Kill Me Again; the overthe- top cop in David Lynch's Mulholland Falls and Halle Berry's CIA boss in Die Another Day.

In 2002 Madsen starred in the series Big Apple, as Miller the Killer in the TV remake of High Noon in FX's controversial 44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shootout, opposite Ashton Kutcher in My Boss's Daughter and in the epic Euro-Western Muraya, a film adaptation of Jean Mobius Giraud's classic French comic strip Blueberry.

Madsen has published three books of poetry and short stories: Beer, Blood, and Ashes, Eat the Worm and Burning in Paradise, which won the Independent Book Publisher's Firecracker Poetry Book of the Year Award in 2001. His most recent book, Blessing of the Hounds, was published by 12 Gage Press in 2002. He is currently at work on his third book of prose, 46 Down.