Legitimate tough guy Michael Madsen made a name for himself playing gun-toting psychopaths, but the versatile stage-trained actor can slip on the white hat too as he did for the "Free Willy" franchise, playing the good guy foster father. He spent two years apprenticing at Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theatre under the direction of John Malkovich before getting his first big break, saying a few lines in his feature debut, "WarGames" (1983). Relocated in L.A., he landed small roles in TV (Edward Zwick's Emmy-winning "Special Bulletin", NBC 1983) and films ("Racing With the Moon" and "The Natural" both 1984) and established enough of a persona with his steady diet of bit parts as the heavy to earn the role of Augie Danzig, the murderous son of a crime lord (Eli Wallach) on the short-lived ABC series "Our Family Honor" (1985-86). Although his turn as the understanding boyfriend of Susan Sarandon in Ridley Scott's "Thelma & Louise" (1991) raised his profile substantially, it was his role as the psychotic killer in John Dahl's "Kill Me Again" (1989) that caught the eye of Quentin Tarantino and led to his true breakthrough performance.