James Thomas Patrick Walsh (September 28, 1943 – February 27, 1998) was an American character actor. His many films include: Tin Men (1987), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), A Few Good Men (1992), Hoffa (1992), Nixon (1995), Sling Blade (1996), Breakdown (1997) and Pleasantville (1998).[1]
Walsh was born in San Francisco, California. He had three siblings: Christopher, Patricia, and Mary.[2]
After graduating from college in 1967, Walsh worked briefly as a VISTA volunteer in Newport, Rhode Island organizing tenants for the United Tenant Organizations of Rhode Island (UTO) before resigning to pursue his acting career. Prior to becoming an actor, he also worked as a barman, an encyclopedia salesman, a junior high school teacher, a gymnasium equipment salesman, and a reporter. In 1974, he was discovered by a theater director and began working in off-Broadway shows, where he began using the initials "J. T." to avoid confusion with another stage actor named James Walsh.[citation needed]
On stage, Walsh received critical acclaim for his performance as John Williamson in the 1984 U.S. premiere of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross in Chicago and subsequently on Broadway.[citation needed] He did not appear in films until 1983, when he had a minor role in Eddie Macon's Run. Over the next 15 years, he appeared in over 50 feature films, increasingly taking the villain role for which he is well known, such as Sergeant Major Dickerson in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987). On television, he again portrayed an evil character, prison warden Brodeur on the 1995 X-Files episode "The List".
Among the films Walsh appeared in are Tin Men (1987), Misery (1990), Backdraft (1991), Sniper (1993), The Client (1994), Miracle on 34th Street (1994), Outbreak (1995), Executive Decision (1996), Sling Blade (1996), and he also played the rather sympathetic Marine Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Markinson in A Few Good Men (1992). He played a member of Majestic 12 in the 1996 sci-fi drama series Dark Skies. Walsh notably played real people in three films: journalist Bob Woodward in Wired (1989), Teamsters president Frank Fitzsimmons in Hoffa (1992), and Richard Nixon's domestic advisor John Ehrlichman in Nixon (1995).
The 1997 thriller Breakdown, which featured Walsh as villainous truck driver Warren "Red" Barr, was his last starring film released during his lifetime. In his final year of life, Walsh starred in The Negotiator (1998), Pleasantville (1998), and Hidden Agenda (1999), all of which were dedicated to his memory.[3]
Walsh died of a heart attack in the hospital in La Mesa, California, on February 27, 1998, at the age of 54, after feeling ill and collapsing at the Optimum Health Institute in Lemon Grove. According to author Marc Seifer, for whom Walsh had narrated a documentary a few weeks earlier, Walsh had experienced chest pains and had an EKG test done that resulted in a misdiagnosis.[citation needed]
Jack Nicholson, who acted with Walsh in A Few Good Men and Hoffa, dedicated his Best Actor Oscar for As Good as It Gets to him.[4]
In his tribute to Walsh in Time Out New York, Andrew Johnston wrote:
Walsh is invariably referred to as a character actor who specialized in villains, but that description doesn't quite do justice to what he did. The typical Walsh character was a plot device, really, serving either as a moral counterpoint to the star of the show or as an Iagolike figure egging on the hero in a way likely to lead to the protagonists's downfall. These characters were often self-important authority figures 'defending' the American establishment from the individualism represented by the movies' heroes ... or crooks who thrived by exploiting the hypocrisy of the system. Walsh didn't just make a career of playing bad guys — his performances offered a sort of running commentary on the power structure of American society.[5]