MOVIES : He’s Bad, but Not to the Bone : Michael Madsen doesn’t really want to make a career out of playing crazed killers--he helped free Willy, remember? But he’s so good at being “bad” that it just keeps happening. (And he does enjoy it.)

“I think I’m a leading man in a bad guy’s body,” jokes actor Michael Madsen, clearly aware of the tough-guy persona he’s developed since he delivered the performance everybody remembers from Quentin Tarantino’s critically acclaimed low-budget thriller, “Reservoir Dogs.” Madsen played Mr. Blonde, the cool killer who casually slices the ear off a bound and gagged police officer while prancing around to Stealer’s Wheel oddball ‘70s hit, “Stuck in the Middle With You.” It was a horrifyingly convincing performance, but the 35-year-old actor is determined to prove he can do other things than play the heavy.

Toward that end, he took the role of sensitive dad Glen Greenwood in last year’s surprise box-office hit, “Free Willy,” the story of a killer whale and the troubled kid who befriends him. Madsen looked surprisingly at home tossing a football with 12-year-old actor Jason James Richter, who played his foster son in the film, but it didn’t take long for him to trade the football back in for a gun. Madsen recently completed work on Lawrence Kasdan’s “Wyatt Earp,” a Western epic slated for release on July 4, which finds him cast as Wyatt’s older brother Virgil (Kevin Costner has the lead in the film). Madsen is also prominently featured in Roger Donaldson’s “The Getaway,” which opens Friday.

“The Getaway” is a remake of the 1972 Sam Peckinpah chase picture that starred Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, which was based on a book by pulp novelist Jim Thompson. Donaldson’s version features Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger as lovers on the run from the law as they struggle to extricate themselves from a life of crime. Madsen turns up here as Rudy, a sociopathic killer who pulls a heist with the couple, then proceeds to double-cross everybody within firing distance. So ferocious is his performance that Madsen is going to need to do some major back-peddling in order to persuade anybody he’s not the most dangerous actor in Hollywood.

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Meeting with Madsen at a Beverly Hills restaurant, one encounters a man who both lives up to his reputation as a ruffian, yet is unexpectedly cordial and accessible. Dressed in motorcycle boots and a leather jacket, he has a few beers and several cigarettes for lunch, and talks in a hoarse whisper that’s vintage Brando. A few minutes are spent discussing the finer points of tattoos--Madsen has several quite beautiful ones, including the Harley-Davidson logo on one biceps, and his wife’s name (Jeannine) on the other--and when the conversation drifts to literature Madsen remains perfectly in character and names Charles Bukowski as his favorite author.

When one points out that guns have figured prominently in most of his films and asks if he owns any himself, he says, “Sure, I have a few guns--I’ve used them, too, because I’ve been in life-threatening situations. There’s a lot of bad men out there.”

Yeah, Madsen’s been around the block, but he’s not 100% muscle. “I’m shy,” he confesses, “and I’m not the kind of guy who wants to be at a party with a lot of people because I prefer being an observer to being a participant. I’ve always been a loner,” he adds. “We could sit here and talk for hours and you could leave knowing absolutely nothing about me.”

It’s hard to say exactly what Madsen might be hiding, but some who’ve succeeded in penetrating whatever defenses he has erected around himself insist he’s one of the nicest guys in the business.

“Michael’s quite sentimental but he doesn’t want people to know that, and I find that a very endearing thing about him,” says “Wyatt Earp” director Lawrence Kasdan. “He’s a tough guy with a soft heart, and he and I connected immediately.”

Baldwin concurs: “Michael’s a very special guy, and I grew to love him over the course of making ‘The Getaway’--he’s absolutely amazing in the film too. To play the part of Rudy you have to be able to convey that you’re really capable of hurting somebody, and Michael can do that with next to no effort.

“It’s kind of a shame he’s such a convincing bad guy because he’s capable of doing a lot of different things, and Hollywood rarely lets an actor break out of the typecasting that gets laid on them,” Baldwin adds. “Hollywood isn’t the greatest place in the world to have a career that revolves around self-expression, and I think Michael should make some money, then go back to Chicago and do a play. I’d love to see him on stage--he’d probably be one of the greatest actors we’ve seen, because he’s just the right amount of crazy.”

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It was in Chicago, in fact, that Madsen’s crazy quotient began percolating. Born there in 1958, the middle of three children (actress Virginia Madsen is his younger sister), Madsen recalls being attracted to movies, and to extremes of human experience, from a young age.

“My childhood was chaotic and diversified,” Madsen flatly declares. “My parents split up when I was 9 and after that we never lived in the same place for more than a year because we didn’t have much money and my mother had to work two jobs (Madsen’s mother is a writer and producer who currently lives in Los Angeles). I suppose I was a juvenile delinquent, and that was probably because I was always the new kid in school coming in at the middle of the year, so I tended to hang out with the outsiders, underdogs and losers. They were more interesting to me and I never fit in with the privileged-people scene, so I wound up getting in trouble.

“My mother introduced me to Kerouac, Henry Miller, Hemingway and Van Gogh, and my father, who was a Chicago fireman for 30 years, introduced me to people who were burned alive and run over by trains. My father’s work exposed me to a very violent aspect of life, and maybe that’s where I first got a taste for danger. I remember jumping off roofs and getting into fights from a very young age, so it’s hard to say exactly where that came from.

“When I wasn’t outside tearing up in the neighborhood, I was home watching old movies on TV,” he continues. “I was a big Humphrey Bogart fan when I was little, and I also remember being totally knocked out by this Robert Mitchum movie, ‘Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison.’ Kirk Douglas’ film ‘Lonely Are the Brave’ was also a big favorite of mine--it was those two films that got me thinking acting might be something I was interested in doing.”

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The films Madsen admired as a child left an imprint on him that is clearly apparent to those who have followed his work. In fact, it was Madsen’s evocation of an acting style that dominated American movies in the ‘40s and ‘50s that led Tarantino to cast him in “Reservoir Dogs.”

“Michael’s a throwback to a breed of actor that includes people like Robert Mitchum, Aldo Ray and Lee Marvin,” says Tarantino. “Many actors of that generation had been in World War II and they’d seen life, and most actors today can’t fill their shoes--Harvey Keitel, Sean Penn and Larry Fishburne are the only ones I can think of who have that kind of weight, and Michael has it in spades.

“Michael has all these weird mannerisms,” he adds, “and in the process of making ‘Reservoir Dogs’ I just fell in love with them. In the course of a short conversation he’ll pick at his thumb, then he’ll rub his eyebrow, bring his finger down his nose and drag it across his lip, then he’ll stick his finger in his ear and scratch his neck. It’s classic Method actor stuff, but having gotten to know Michael I can tell you these aren’t affectations--this is genuinely who he is.”

Though Madsen was enchanted by movies from an early age, it wasn’t until he was 20 that he began to seriously pursue acting. “I was working as an auto mechanic and I went with a friend to meet some girls at the Steppenwolf Theater,” says Madsen, who was considering becoming a cop at the time. “The girls stood us up, but I saw ‘Of Mice and Men’ with John Malkovich, and wound up taking a scene study class with him for a few months--I didn’t get the idea of studying acting, though. I figured if you can do it, then you do it, and if you can’t, then you don’t.”

Madsen may have been indifferent to acting classes but he was excited by the work itself, and in 1983 he landed a small part in “War Games” that brought him to L.A. “When I first got here I didn’t know anyone in L.A., I worked in a gas station in Beverly Hills for nine months, and was living in an apartment at Western and Franklin,” recalls Madsen. “I had a ’65 Cadillac with a smashed door that I drove around town in, and I spent most of my time chasing girls, auditioning for parts, working on my motorcycle and meeting people.

“I was very idealistic about the life of an actor then, but that changed dramatically because my idealism was subjected to a major reality check early on,” he continues. “What happened was, I’d done a pilot for a TV series based on Barry Levinson’s film ‘Diner’--I was cast as Boogie, the character played by Mickey Rourke in the film--and that led to a small part in Levinson’s next film, ‘The Natural.’ I was 23 at the time and had a couple of big scenes with Robert Redford that I think I handled pretty well, but when the film came out and I went to see it I’d been completely cut. Nobody had the dignity, honesty or respect to let me know, and in the long run that was a good thing because it was a slap in the face that wised me up fast to what this business is really like.”

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Bloodied but unbowed, Madsen pressed on, briefly marrying in his mid-20s (to Cher’s sister, Georganne LaPiere), and landing small parts in more than a dozen films that prepped him for the second lead in John Dahl’s 1989 film, “Kill Me Again.” Cast as a psychotic killer, Madsen was allowed to stretch out and really show what he could do onscreen for the first time--and the main thing he proved was that he could more than hold his own in a milieu of cinematic violence. It was this performance that led Tarantino to cast him in “Reservoir Dogs,” a film that’s been taken to task by many for its over-the-top violence.

“Yes, ‘Reservoir Dogs’ is violent, but it’s a subliminal film and you have to look below its surface,” Madsen points out. “It’s actually a film about men trusting each other and the price they pay for doing that, and the violence is simply a catalyst for getting into this theme. You couldn’t have this bunch of men dancing together to ‘The Nutcracker,’ because when we stopped dancing, who’d give a damn what we said to each other? Everybody responds to violence because it’s a very real part of life. I’ve seen a lot of violence in my life and it’s not something I have to pretend to know about, because I’ve been in trouble in my life.

“Performing in a violent film does take a toll on your psyche,” he admits, “and that’s easy to forget when you’re working because it has a cumulative effect. It sinks progressively deeper into you as you’re making the picture, then when it’s over you suddenly find yourself with a weird personality you can’t get rid of for a while.

“At first I didn’t want to do ‘The Getaway’ because the ‘Reservoir Dogs’ thing was hanging on me and I didn’t want to play any heavies for a while, but ultimately I couldn’t resist,” he says of the role of Rudy, which was played by Al Lettieri in the Peckinpah original. “It’s fun to play a character like this because it’s a part that has no boundaries, and the crazier you are the better. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to play a character with just one color, though, so I tried to bring a lighter touch to Rudy. If you’re gonna play somebody really demonic you’ve got to have some humor.”

The most ingenious bit of shading Madsen brings to the part is the fact that he cradles a kitten in his arms in several scenes--a kitten who purrs contentedly, and appears to be in heaven lounging about on the chest of the psychopathic Rudy.

“The cat is a great detail for the character,” says director Roger Donaldson, “but it also created difficulties because it’s hard to act when you’re worrying about which way a cat is looking. There were several great takes that didn’t make the movie because the cat is looking in the wrong direction--luckily the cat really took to Michael and was prepared to sit there for long periods.”

The cat--who goes by the name “Kitty” in the film--does add a perverse bit of whimsy to Madsen’s character, but his performance is nonetheless savage and disturbing. That may be why one senses a trace of relief in Madsen’s voice when he reports that Kasdan’s “Wyatt Earp” “isn’t a violent film--it’s a historically accurate account of 30 years in the lives of the Earp brothers. There’s killing, sure, because killing was part of the world these men lived in, but it’s not like ‘Rambo’ killing. It’s a film about the Old West, which was a hard place to live--just like L.A. now,” he laughs. “I wish I had a couple of brothers like the Earps.”

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When he’s in L.A. between jobs, Madsen says he pretty much keeps to himself. Currently separated from his second wife, Jeannine Bisignano, with whom he has a 4-year-old son, Christian, Madsen says that the worst thing about an acting career is that “it makes it impossible to have a stable personal life because other people find it hard to be comfortably involved in your lifestyle. I’m happy when I’m working on a film, but whenever I return from a location the neat little package I’d tied my life up into when I left has come undone. You always come home to a big mess, so I tend to go into a cocoon when I’m not working and just want to sleep all the time.

“I don’t know if I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll always have a chaotic personal life as long as I’m an actor, but it seems like I can’t get away from that, because I’ve tried. I’m not frivolous and it’s not like ‘This ain’t working out, so screw you, baby’--I’ve tried to hang in there and do the right thing, but sometimes you don’t get much cooperation.

“When you do this kind of work, a lot of people throw themselves at you and that’s why I’m glad it took a while for whatever success I’m having to come to me,” he concludes. “If all this had happened when I was 22 I probably would’ve gotten into some bad trouble.”

When one points out that it’s never too late for that, Madsen laughs and says “yeah, I know--I’m in trouble right now.”