Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey runs for 89 minutes, a truly hard-boiled and concise crime thriller about an older man investigating the death of his daughter, from a director who values a trim runtime. (Soderbergh has put out two features in 2025, and their combined length is about the same as The Batman or Avengers: Endgame.) In that ruthlessly edited context, it’s a little surprising that the movie is able to pause for a few minutes to observe a minor character doing shtick, seemingly improvised by the actor. Such was the power of Nicky Katt.
Katt, who recently died following a struggle with depression, had an unusual career. In television, he followed a fairly typical path of booking increasingly high-profile guest roles until he landed a big one: Playing the troubled, charismatic wiseass teacher Harry Senate, a lead role on Fox’s four-season drama Boston Public. Katt didn’t last all four seasons, leaving early in the third to pursue more movie roles, though he never landed any as prominent. Even as a TV actor turned big-screen “that guy,” he didn’t gain as much prominence as someone like, say, Michael Shannon or Shea Whigham.
What he did, though, was cultivate a series of relationships with some truly excellent filmmakers. After his memorable turn in Dazed And Confused, Richard Linklater hired him three more times. Perhaps he recommended Katt to fellow Austinite Robert Rodriguez, who put him in Sin City and Planet Terror. He also did two for David Gordon Green, and two for Christopher Nolan, including an uncredited part in The Dark Knight; he’s the cop riding along a disguised Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) during the famous truck-chase sequence. He’s the only actor to appear in that movie and also the much-maligned Batman & Robin. (Not as the same character, sadly.)
Katt was always a welcome presence in these bit parts; visually, he could disappear enough into a role as a criminal or a cop that it might take even a dedicated fan a moment to clock him. The moment of realization would typically come when his character would show offbeat irreverence for the action at hand, like his low-key amazement after getting run through by an arrow in Sin City. He could be deadpan or he could be animated in his hostility; either way, he fulfilled the constant character-actor assignment, which is to make an impression almost entirely through shorthand: vibe, delivery, projecting a persona without belaboring it.
Which brings us to Katt’s work with Soderbergh. In The Limey, he plays Stacy, a hitman hired to take out Wilson (Terence Stamp), the rampaging old man seeking answers and revenge. He’s introduced nonchalantly picking a fight over pool (“does that mean you forfeit?” he deadpans after knocking his opponent out), and his most famous scene has just as little to do with his function in the mechanics of the plot: While observing their target, Stacy and his partner lurk around a movie set, where Stacy muses about realistic shows he’d like to see (“Like Sick Old Man, or Skinny Little Weakling… Big Fat Guy, wouldn’t you watch a show called Big Fat Guy?”) and mean-spiritedly roasts extras and PAs for his own amusement.
Katt, who apparently improvised some of this material, obviously enjoyed goofing on the acting lifestyle; he did so even more directly in his other role for Soderbergh, in the experimental comedy Full Frontal. He plays, uh, Hitler. Specifically, he plays an unnamed actor who has taken the role of Hitler in a play. Katt is very funny throughout the film, never moreso when ranting, basically unprompted, about one of his more unusual practices as an actor. The clip is sadly nowhere to be found online, so I’ll quote Katt’s presumably ad-libbed response to the fact that the play’s Ava Braun has quit:
“You know what? Fuck her. And here’s why. Number one: Anyone who’s offended by drinking blood, obviously doesn’t drink blood. Number two: Anyone who drinks as much blood as I do knows it has no effect. Number three: There is absolutely no scientific connection between drinking a shot of blood a day and being an extraordinary actor. Number four: It is impossible to prove number three.”
It’s a small moment that nonetheless made me laugh about as hard as I’ve ever laughed in a movie theater. What makes it so funny – what makes a lot of Katt characters so funny, but especially in his Soderbergh movies – is how clearly it suggests a whole unseen person with hang-ups and convictions that Full Frontal, as a movie, is not designed to get fully into; they’re funnier as implications, anyway. Lots of great character actors perform this trick; Katt was particularly adept at making the process funny as well as weirdly insightful about whatever lowlife or oddball he was playing. (Both visually and vocally, he brings to mind Ben Stiller, like a version of Stiller who has given up in the social niceties that are often his undoing.)
That quality, along with his lack of ubiquity, made Katt a bit unknowable as a performer, which only increased his mystique. It seems likely now that at some point in his career, he must have been hiding a great deal of pain. If he was channeling some greater dissatisfaction in these parts (quoting The Limey again, dismissing his partner’s note that a woman they’re watching “looks nice”: “You think she’s any happier?”), what a wonderful gift to create hints of a whole other life behind it, and to make people laugh while doing so.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others.