Some actors pass on without a satisfying farewell performance. Others seem to have one locked and loaded for years, even decades, before they actually leave us. The latter was the case with the late Michael Madsen, an in-demand character actor probably best known for his roles in Quentin Tarantino films. He appeared in half of Tarantino’s features, including a memorable role as the ear-slicing Mr. Blonde in Tarantino’s debut, Reservoir Dogs.

At the time, Madsen was more of a known quantity than his soon-to-be-famous writer/director pal. He appeared in WarGames and The Natural early on, and just before Reservoir Dogs in 1992, he had a pretty big 1991 with roles in The Doors and Thelma & Louise. Those combined with Dogs seemed to boost his career to the next level, particularly when a movie called for someone with similar vibes to Tom Sizemore but perhaps less likely to spontaneously stab you (the ear-slicing notwithstanding). He is definitely the only guy to have a major role in both the Species and Free Willy franchises. By the 2000s, he was a staple of direct-to-video movies but still a recognizable character actor, meaning his filmography is dotted both with stuff as mainstream as a James Bond movie and titles that sound like something Troy McClure might have boasted about on The Simpsons, like Vampires Anonymous. These titles overtook his bigger-studio work in the past decade-plus.

The constant was his work for Tarantino, never in as big a part as Mr. Blonde, but still evocative – particularly his role in the Kill Bill saga. He played Budd, the only male member of the Deadly Vipers Assassination Squad besides their leader, his brother Bill. It’s Bill who orders them to go after The Bride (Uma Thurman) when she leaves the group to have a child, earning her post-coma ire and a “roaring rampage of revenge.” Split into two parts for its theatrical release (and yet to be reunited on home video, though it sometimes screens as a full film at Tarantino’s theater in Los Angeles), Kill Bill saves Budd’s confrontation with The Bride for its second volume.

Madsen’s Budd is not going to present the same formidable challenge to The Bride as characters played by Lucy Liu or Vivaca Fox. Both Madsen and Tarantino understand this from the outset, and so the Budd/Bride standoff has a craftier bent: When she comes for him, Budd (who has been tipped off by Bill) shotgun-blasts her with rock salt, knocks her out, and buries her alive.

The glimpse we get of Budd’s post-Viper life shows why he would need to go about this more methodically than his high-living fellow Vipers. He’s working as a bouncer at a poorly attended strip club, and in a scene that doesn’t further the plot but tells us plenty about Budd and his life, he’s chewed out by his boss for showing up 20 minutes late – despite, as Budd laconically protests, a lack of customers (“there ain’t no one out there to bounce”). He’s then spitefully removed from the work schedule and somehow also assigned to clean up a mess in the bathroom before he goes. Madsen doesn’t have a lot of lines in this scene, but he doesn’t need them. The way that Budd stands his ground physically offers hints at his past as a brutal assassin, while his quiet, almost invisible frustration indicates that he has been forced this particular lot in life – taking orders from a malcontent, coke-sniffing jackass. The way he touches his cowboy hat when his boss dresses him down for wearing a “shitkicker” hat to work, the way he keeps it off even after he’s out of the boss’s sight… it’s all perfectly played by Madsen, drawing upon expectations based on his past roles as tough guys and heavies.

Budd is also the most philosophical of the Vipers so far as The Bride’s mission to kill them all, albeit in a shruggy fashion: “That woman deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die,” he says to Bill, before pausing and laughing it off: “Then again, so does she.” In his desiccated way, he’s the character in the entire saga most accepting of what a bad person he’s been. Yet he still has more than a glimmer of malice when he does rouse himself to trap The Bride in a horrific fate, more than enough to mitigate the sympathy Madsen generates for him. For all that acceptance, The Bride doesn’t wind up actually killing Budd; he’s offed by fellow Viper Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), which almost feels worse; she sets a poisonous snake upon him to avoid paying him money for The Bride’s sword, not out of any particular vendetta. He’s beneath her contempt. Madsen never just sticks to Budd’s contemptible side, however. He holds on to the most threadbare shreds of dignity, and in the process, makes him one of the most memorable characters in a sprawling, colorful film. It’s no wonder Tarantino kept coming back to him.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn, podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com, and contributing at Patse, The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Guardian, among others.