Powers Boothe's gravelly voice gave his villains the confidence of men accustomed to getting their way. We rate him most when that authority has other strong actors to contend with.
Fi1m perspective
Boothe's gravelly voice makes a demand sound like something already settled. He is persuasive as a man who enjoys power, and the pleasure matters: it makes his threatening characters recognisably human. We like him best when the people around him have enough weight to challenge that certainty. A strong ensemble gives him more to work against than another character's fear.
His breakthrough came as Jim Jones in Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), followed by an early feature lead in Walter Hill's Southern Comfort (1981). As Hardin, alongside Keith Carradine's Spencer and Fred Ward's Reece, he helps make the pursuit matter beyond the immediate question of who gets away. The soldiers can be thinly drawn, but these actors give their worsening behaviour a persuasive human weight. We felt uneasy even when the hunting paused, because the men kept offering aggression where we wanted judgement. Hill gets something valuable from Boothe here: he helps sustain the tension between the men without making the film feel like a solo performance.
His later heavies include Curly Bill Brocius in Tombstone (1993) and Cy Tolliver in Deadwood (2004–06). The long, rhetorical speeches in Deadwood suit his Shakespearean training, giving that voice more to do than announce a threat. Tolliver has enough complexity to keep the commanding manner from becoming the entire character. We get time to consider the man speaking, rather than simply register the danger.
Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City (2005) offers a more concentrated use of his authority as Senator Roark. His imposing presence suits the film's hard black-and-white images, where force is rarely understated. It is an inventive crime film, and he is well cast within its severe outlines. But the repeated brutality wears us down, and an actor's assurance cannot solve that problem. For all the suitability of the casting, Southern Comfort gives us more reason to care about the people sharing the screen.
Being a dependable heavy could limit the work he was offered, particularly the lighter and leading parts. We would have welcomed more chances to hear that voice without waiting for trouble. Start with Southern Comfort, where the ensemble makes full use of him.
Biography
Powers Boothe was an American actor. He was born in Snyder, Texas, and studied at Southwest Texas State University and Southern Methodist University before beginning his career with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Boothe won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his portrayal of Jim Jones in the 1980 television film Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones. He is known for his roles as Curly Bill Brocius in Tombstone (1993), Cy Tolliver in the HBO series Deadwood (2004–2006), Senator Roark in Sin City (2005) and its 2014 sequel, and Gideon Malick in The Avengers (2012) and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2015–2016). He also appeared as Noah Daniels in 24 (2007).
Boothe died in Los Angeles on 14 May 2017.
