GOSSIP & RUMORS: Michael Madsen, dead at 67, mourned by ‘Reservoir Dogs’ co-star Harvey Keitel

Harvey Keitel is remembering actor Michael Madsen, who was found dead at home in Los Angeles Thursday. He was 67.

“We’ve lost another great American poet,” Keitel, 86, said in a statement to The Post. 

“Farewell, my dear friend.”

In addition to hundreds of other films in which Madsen often played tough guys during his 40-year career, he appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” as Vic Vega / Mr. Blonde opposite Keitel’s Larry Dimmick / Mr. White.

“I’ll never forget one of the best scenes I’ve ever seen on film — of you and Chris Penn fighting in ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ ” Keitel said of Madsen. 

“A great love scene. Give Chris a hug for me.”

Penn, Sean Penn’s brother who played “Nice Guy” Eddie Cabot in the film, died in 2006 at 40.

“Reservoir Dogs” is Madsen’s best-remembered movie, and one of several collaborations between him and Tarantino, including “The Hateful Eight” and the “Kill Bill” movies. 

In “Dogs,” Madsen plays a violent ex-convict, and one of eight men planning to rob a jewelry store.

“ ‘Reservoir Dogs’ is enthusiastically violent and bloody, an orgy of sadistic attitude — especially in the form of Michael Madsen,” said a 1992 review in The Post. 

“As Mr. Blonde, he bops in time to the song ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ before slicing off someone’s ear and then picking up the beat of the music again.”

His Vic victory also led to frequent typecasting. 

“I guess it’s part of the whole bad-boy package,” he told the Hollywood Reporter in 2018. 

“But I’d rather have a movie like ‘Reservoir Dogs’ than not have it. There are a lot of actors that are a lot more recognized or famous than me, who get paid a lot more than me who haven’t done even one film that you’d remember.”

Madsen, who was born in Chicago, was a prolific actor who still has several movies set to be posthumously released.

“In the last two years Michael Madsen has been doing some incredible work with independent film including upcoming feature films ‘Resurrection Road,’ ‘Concessions’ and ‘Cookbook for Southern Housewives,’ and was really looking forward to this next chapter in his life,” Madsen’s managers Susan Ferris and Ron Smith, and publicist Liz Rodriguez told The Post.