Bio
M. Emmet Walsh is an American actor who has appeared in almost 200 film and television productions.
One of his most acclaimed roles was as the double-crossing private detective in Blood Simple (1984) for which he won the 1986 Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead.
Walsh has made a solid career of playing corrupt cops, deadly crooks and zany comedic roles since the early 1970s.
He first appeared in a few fairly forgettable roles both on TV and onscreen before cropping up in several well remembered films, including a courtroom police officer in What's Up, Doc? (1972), as the weird Dickie Dunn in Slap Shot (1977) and as a looney sniper hunting Steve Martin in The Jerk (1979).
On-screen demand heated up for him in the early 1980s with attention-grabbing work in key hits, including Brubaker (1980), Reds (1981) and as Harrison Ford's police chief in the futuristic thriller Blade Runner (1982).
Walsh then turned in a stellar performance as the sleazy, double-crossing private detective in the Joel Cohen and Ethan Coen film noir Blood Simple (1984), and showed up again for the Coens as a loud-mouthed sheet-metal worker bugging Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona (1987).
As Walsh moved into his fifties and beyond, Hollywood continued to offer him plenty of work, and he has appeared in over 100 movies since passing the half-century mark.
His consistent ability to turn out highly entertaining portrayals led film critic Roger Ebert to coin the "Stanton-Walsh Rule", which states that any film starring Walsh or Harry Dean Stanton has to have some merit.
Ebert later conceded that this rule was broken by 1999's Wild Wild West, in which Walsh appeared.