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Immortan Joe and the War Boys ride in the new ‘Mad Max’
Nicholas Hoult, Josh Helman and Hugh Keays-Byrne star in a scene from the action movie “Mad Max: Fury Road”.
Hugh Keays-Byrne, the actor best known for playing the iconic villains in the action movie series “Mad Max”, is dead. He was 73 years old.
On Wednesday, Keays-Byrne’s manager confirmed to USA TODAY that the Australian-British actor died peacefully on Tuesday morning. The manager added that the actor’s family asked for privacy during this time.
Keays-Byrne played the evil Toecutter in the original 1979 film “Mad Max”. He returned to play another villain – warlord Immortan Joe – in 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”.
George Miller, who directed both films, recalled Keays-Byrne in a statement to USA TODAY.
“Hugh was formidable, bold, warm and kind as both an artist and a man,” Miller said. “He taught us so much.”
Charlize Theron, who co-starred with Keays-Byrne in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” paid tribute to the actor.
“RIP Hugh Keays-Byrne,” he wrote Twitter. “It’s amazing that you managed to play an evil warlord so well because you were such a kind and beautiful soul. You will miss him deeply my friend.”
As the ferocious leader of the Toecutter biker gang, Keays-Byrne collided with Mel Gibson’s Max in “Mad Max”. The former India-born member of London’s Royal Shakespeare is back as masked warlord monster and car driver Immortan Joe for “Fury Road,” which raised more than $ 44 million over the opening weekend.
Keays-Byrne reflected on the franchise’s success in an interview with USA TODAY in 2015. “I don’t think you think about that. It sounds a little big,” he said, adding that being a villain is perfectly fine, because ” for an old ham like me, it’s great fun. “
“I tend to always be the bad guys,” he said. “I can’t wait to play a lover.”
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Keays-Byrne began his acting career as a teenager, working in TV and theater before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company and ending up in Australia in 1973 after a touring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He became a fixture on Australian screens big and small before Miller got to call.
The director hired Keays-Byrne and a group of fellow actors to play Toecutter and his gang, but he couldn’t afford to fly them from Sydney to Melbourne. So the director for the first time sent them motorbikes via train, and the crew got off, becoming a compact group as they went.
Off-screen, Keays-Byrne was a homemaker, for whom a nice day involved painting, writing poetry, or working with tools in his garden.
“I like to sit and talk, have coffee, chat about politics and junk,” he told USA TODAY. “Everything is alright.”
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Contributing: Brian Truitt
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