Michael Madsen‘s doctor is shedding light on the actor’s cause of death.
The longtime Quentin Tarantino collaborator died from heart failure, with heart disease and alcoholism as contributing factors, his cardiologist told NBC4 Los Angeles. He was 67.
Madsen was found unresponsive at his Malibu, Calif., home on July 3. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told the outlet that he was pronounced dead at the scene of natural causes, with no foul play suspected.
In the wake of his passing, his sister Virginia Madsen said the family was “not mourning a public figure,” but rather “flesh and blood and ferocious heart.”
“He was thunder and velvet,” the Candyman actress told Variety in a July 3 statement. “Mischief wrapped in tenderness. A poet disguised as an outlaw. A father, a son, a brother—etched in contradiction, tempered by love that left its mark.”
Remembering the Reservoir Dogs alum as a man who “stormed through life loud, brilliant, and half on fire,” she added, “I’ll miss our inside jokes, the sudden laughter, the sound of him. I’ll miss the boy he was before the legend; I miss my big brother.”
