Any happier than any other asshole in this life: Nicky Katt, 1970-2025

There are plenty of almost-was roles in movies — Eric Roberts as Marty McFly, say, or Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones — but there are infinitely more what-ifs that never existed outside of somebody’s head. Fancasting is based on the idea of an existing face overlapping with an existing role, and for that to happen, you need to have seen that face before and seen something in it that fits the face in your mind. Nicky Katt, who died this weekend at the age of 54, had many memorable roles in his too-short career, but I’m missing him most for something he never did.

Katt starting acting as a child and his breakout role came in his 20s playing a teen — mean-as-fuck Clint in Dazed and Confused. There is plenty of jerkish, if not sadistic, behavior in Richard Linklater’s film, but it’s the kind of bullying that is downward-directed toward the weak, and Clint gives off a different, more dangerous vibe. Katt is not tense, but he is ready for violence, his heavy brow hooding dark eyes that look out on the world with disinterest and disdain. He is not immune to picking on the low-status nerds himself, and one of them, Adam Goldberg’s Mike, decides to stand up for himself and throw the proverbial first punch that is supposed to surprise and shut down a bully. Clint takes the hit and immediately beats the shit out of Mike, and it’s almost worse that the fight is broken up before any real damage can be done that both men would have to deal with. Instead, it’s a lifelong humiliation for Mike and a few seconds of asskicking Clint will forget immediately as he stomps through life and over those who don’t get out of his way. 

Mike’s thrashing is one of the many points of the movie where Linklater denies cliché, a choice I had problems with the first time I watched the movie as a teen myself. What do you mean, this asshole just beats up a guy and walks away? But that is real life and the intensity that Katt brings to the performance is not the realism of disappearing into a role but the realism of a rock, a fist, a stare so cold it makes you step aside. Katt worked with Linklater many times, including on the Dazed follow-up subUrbia. Based on a play by Eric Bogosian, it’s writerly and obnoxious and largely unreal in its depiction of whiny 20-somethings. But even through the contrivance of his tough-guy veteran’s secret impotence, Katt’s sneering despair keeps clear of false notes.

I don’t think Katt played too many upstanding characters — his base level of simmering aggression was too much of a threat. He was a tough guy, a goon, a crook. And in Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey, he plays Stacy, a hitman hired to kill Terence Stamp as the title Brit. Stacy is coarse and cruel-humored and contemptuous, but he is also pretty bad at the job he is given and ambitious and arrogant enough to try to double-cross the man who gave it to him. He is a real piece of shit! And in Katt’s portrayal, he is magnetic: you would never want to stand next to him as he leers at an elementary school student and runs down a list a TV shows he’d like to see (“Wouldn’t you watch a show called Big Fat Guy? I’d fuckin’ watch”), but you can’t take your eye off his supercilious malevolence. It’s the opposite of what you’d expect from a cool, competent crook, and yet when I saw Katt I knew: This guy is Parker.

The Limey’s fractured tale of criminal vengeance is heavily indebted to Point Blank, John Boorman’s classic but not exactly faithful adaptation of Richard Stark’s novel The Hunter. That book is the first appearance of Parker, a heist man who would rob and kill his way through two dozen subsequent novels, coldly assessing how to take money from others and dispose of those who would take it from him. Parker is a fascinating character whose adventures have spawned numerous movies, but his presence has never been truly captured on screen, in part because he is so chilly and internal. But somehow Katt’s depiction of dumbassery clearly carried with it the ability to capture its opposite in ruthless skill. And the ability to tweak and hone his demeanor, to discard the bully’s disposition but maintain the same will to impose force. It’s in his carriage and especially the lightless, pitiless look in his eyes.

So Katt became the guy I wanted to see in a Parker movie and of course never did. Most fancasts don’t pan out. And now it will never happen. But that intense reality Katt brought to his real performances gave my idea of his hypothetical performance more shape and power than most dream roles. It was surprising to look up his resumé while writing this obituary and see that he had been out of the business for a decade, because the picture of him in my head was still clear. I don’t see it fading.