Actor M. Emmet Walsh, who portrayed sportswriter Dickie Dunn in the cult hockey flick Slap Shot, has died. He was 88.
Walsh, of course, was known for his multiple roles as a character actor — and was one of those faces we always saw in film, but rarely knew his real name. (Or at least his stage name.)
In Slap Shot, Walsh made his name as the Charleston Chiefs beat writer and "the scribe who invented the catchphrase that anyone who has spent any time in this business has strived for since the peerless hockey movie debuted in February 1977: 'Well, I was trying to capture the spirit of the thing, Reg,'" wrote Marc Stein of The Stein Line.
Of course, that wasn't Walsh's only portrayal of a sports figure. He also played the diving coach in the Rodney Dangerfield classic Back To School, as well as the late-1970s basketball movie The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.
Walsh's credits were seemingly endless, though. He hardly was limited to sports movies.
As Boston.com wrote:
"The ham-faced, heavyset Walsh often played good old boys with bad intentions, as he did in one of his rare leading roles as a crooked Texas private detective in the Coen brothers' first film, the 1984 neo-noir "Blood Simple."
"Joel and Ethan Coen said they wrote the part for Walsh, who would win the first Film Independent Spirit Award for best male lead for the role."
M. Emmett Walsh in 2019. (Getty)
The outlet went to describe Walsh's upbringing, championing him as someone who stuck with his dreams until they were realized.
"Born Michael Emmet Walsh, his characters led people to believe he was from the American South, but he could hardly have been from any further north.
"Walsh was raised on Lake Champlain in Swanton, Vermont, just a few miles from the U.S.-Canadian border, where his grandfather, father and brother worked as customs officers.
"He went to a tiny local high school with a graduating class of 13, then to Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City."
No cause of death has been provided.
