Over more than thirty years, Michael Wincott has gained the reputation of a respected and uncompromising actor. Born in Scarborough, Ontario, he eventually moved to New York City where he graduated from Juilliard in 1986 and began a relationship with Joseph Papp's Public Theatre beginning with his creation of the role of Kent in Eric Bogosian's ...
The Crow, Along Came a Spider, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Dead Man, The Count of Monte Cristo, Basquiat, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Seraphim Falls, Alien: Resurrection, The Three Musketeers, Forsaken, Strange Days, The Doors, Treasure Planet, What Just Happened, Hitchcock, Talk Radio, Before Ni...
TV Shows
24: Live Another Day, Bizarre
Star Sign
Aquarius
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Trademark
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Frequently plays villains.
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Deeply rasping voice
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Quote
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It's good to dress well. Elegance expresses greater expectations of life. The current culture of slovenliness conveys a spiritual and intellectual surrender.
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It's not what's underfoot but in your veins. My father was a working man. He did all manner of things to house and feed his wife and three boys: sold encyclopedias, insurance, was a steamfitter. One day, at thirty-four years of age, on a construction site in twenty below zero, he decided to change his life. He labored by day and, two or three nights a week, placed his safety helmet in a locker at a University. Two degrees later, he became a teacher. He taught me determination and the value of literature and humour. My mother spent Sundays making ravioli by hand. She taught me patience, refinement and the value of one's passions. Of the three sons, I was the only one allowed into the kitchen. She wasn't fond of people around her there. For her it was a sacred place, spending hours rolling the dough, mixing the filling, making the circles of pasta with the open end of a cup. When we'd, at last, sit at the table, the first mouthful seemed like proof of the divine. Sundays were sublime.
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[about his working relationship with Anthony Hopkins on Hitchcock (2012) ] He's been just a remarkable human being and I think, once again in my experience, that the remarkably talented are also... it's because they are remarkable people.
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You have to be careful so you don't make your character dull and predictable. Sometimes you have to bend the script a little... The bad guys are mostly the same on the paper... A bad guy wouldn't think of himself as bad. The guy I'm playing in Metro (1997) thinks of himself as a responsible and nice guy, since he is taking care of his retarded cousin. That is what I try to keep in mind, when I'm shooting and stabbing people.
In 2010 he agreed to star with Luis Robledo and Marisilda Garcia in the western/action/comedy short film "Days Like These", which was to be directed by Justin Eugene Evans, with whom he had recently worked on A Lonely Place for Dying (2009) . The plot was about a poker hustler who found himself trapped between an angry mark looking for revenge, the Union Army of Colorado and the Confederate Army of Texas. The project never entered the production stage, even though it was said to have the humor of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the visual panache of a John Woo action film and the snappy dialogue of an Aaron Sorkin screenplay.
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He was considered for the role of Buddy in Bone Tomahawk (2015).
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Was considered for the role of Willie O'Keefe in JFK (1991). The role went to Kevin Bacon.
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In 2011 he appeared in a test scene for a movie project about American multiple murderer Richard Kuklinski. In the short, directed by Ariel Vromen, he played Robert "Mr. Softee" Pronge while Michael Shannon impersonated Kuklinski. The movie, called The Iceman (2012), entered production at the end of the same year; Shannon kept his role while Chris Evans was chosen to play Pronge because Vromen wanted someone younger for that part. The director offered Wincott another role, but the actor wasn't happy with it and amicably refused. Wincott was thanked in the end credits.
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In the late 90s he was going to star in a project called "Cousin Joey" together with Mickey Rourke and Martin Landau. The movie was about two cousins, one an ex con named Joey (Wincott) who aspires to become a major player in the New York underworld and the other just released from prison (Rourke). Rourke's character tries to hook up with Joey and agrees to work as a loan shark to build up enough money to leave California and set up a home elsewhere and make a new start. A problem arises when their boss (Landau) is angered by Rourke's decision to leave and tries to put the squeeze on him and have him killed. When Wincott finds out, he takes Rourke on the run as they are chased by gangsters. Rourke contributed to the script and developed a lot of aspects to the original one which the producers had in mind; he was aiming for a more dialogue oriented approach, while the producers wanted more action. The result was that the project lost some producers and then failed to secure new financing. At this point Wincott left while Rourke rapidly tried to find a co-star; he didn't succeed and moved on other projects.
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He was considered for a role in Detachment (2011).
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Turned down an audition for an unspecified villain role in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
In December 2008 he and Swedish actor/helmer Rafael Edholm joined forces to write the script for an untitled dark-edged drama/thriller. Taking place in the far north of Sweden and in Venice over four days, the project was the story of two men awaiting the subject of their assignment, an assassination, to arrive when a woman appears who might have been the childhood love of one of them. Wincott was going to play one of the leads while Edholm would've directed the pic, which had a budget of $10 million and was set to shoot starting in February 2010 for delivery in the fall of the same year. Although announced far in advance, the project did not start production due to financial problems.
$5 Million
