M Emmet Walsh, who has died aged 88, was one of the few character actors who could be pivotal, if not key, to almost every film he was in. His ability to define any role could tell the audience more about what they were seeing than all the leads put together. This was literally true of the role for which he became famous, as the private detective Loren Visser in the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple (1984), in which he not only is the true lead character, but also narrates the story.
Walsh used his oleaginous face and lugubrious body to reflect the twists of both character and plot; his narration reveals the natural, reptilian cynicism that lies beneath his compelling but superficial smiles. He is an ordinary man, but in a world that is, for the Coen brothers, ordinarily corrupt. He is the window into this film noir vision. As Visser explains: “Nothing comes with a guarantee. Now I don’t care if you’re the pope of Rome … something can always go wrong … What I know about is Texas, and down here, you’re on your own.”
