What The Cast Of Natural Born Killers Is Doing Today

A maximalist feast complete with multiple formats, angles, filters, and styles; thousands of edits and brutal, Gerald Scarfe-style animation — basically the kitchen sink approach to storytelling — Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" is a nightmare vision of a violence-obsessed America. The Guardian went so far as to call the 1994 satire "privileged style and cinematic effect over nuance." A box office success, the film caused a good deal of controversy in its time, mainly for its bloodshed, the "copycat murders" that took place in its wake, and the kerfuffle that erupted when Quentin Tarantino — who wrote the original story, then sold it to Stone who rewrote it with David Veloz and Richard Rutowski – disowned the film. Tarantino told Brian Koppelman on The Moment podcast, "One of the things about that script, in particular, was that I was trying to make it on the page. So when you read it, you saw the movie. And it's like why didn't [Stone] do at least half of that! It was done for him!" 

While there's no denying the film had an impact, after Stone's one-two-three-four punch of "Platoon," "Wall Street," "Born on the Fourth of July," and "JFK," one could argue that after "NBK," the director's films never captured the same critical or box office acclaim. Holding a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes, "NBK" split critics, and watching it today, you can see why. But the cast escaped mostly unscathed. Let's take a look at where they are today.

Given he doesn't officially show up until the very end of the film, blink and you'll miss Leslie Richard "Arliss" Howard as Owen Traft, Mickey and Mallory's "Guardian Angel" who escorts Wayne, the killers, and their hostages out of their prison. But Howard is an actor you've seen before whether you know it or not. Before "Natural Born Killers," he was Private Cowboy, friend to Matthew Modine's Private Joker in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket," and one of the leads in Paul Brickman's only feature after "Risky Business," 1990's "Men Don't Leave." Following Stone's film, Howard played a number of roles in high profile films. He's the spitting image of John Henry, owner of the Fenway Sports Group in Bennett Miller's "Moneyball." He appeared in two Steven Spielberg projects – "Amistad," where he played John C. Calhoun, and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park." He's in Jonathan Glazer's "Birth" and David Fincher's "Mank." Married since 1996 to actor Debra Winger, Howard has also had recurring roles on AMC's "Rubicon," HBO's "True Blood," and Discovery's Unabomber series "Manhunt."

Next up is anthology film "With/In," which lists Howard among its directors. There's also "Butterfly in the Typewriter," the remarkable story of how John Kennedy Toole's posthumous "A Confederacy of Dunces" came to be, based on the book by Cory MacLauchlin. Howard will play writer, historian, journalist, and Civil War expert Shelby Foote. 

Given her role as Mallory's deluded mother on the TV show-within-the-movie "I Love Mallory," few may recall Edie McClurg's role opposite the man playing her abusive husband in "Natural Born Killers," Rodney Dangerfield, in the 1986 film "Back to School." Noted for her major comic chops, McClurg worked for 10 years with the Groundlings troupe in L.A. and has played dozens of character roles since. It was in John Hughes' "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" that McClurg rose to icon status as the eminently quotable Grace, secretary to Jeffrey Jones' Ed Rooney, in a scene that was allegedly improvised. She would work on three more films with Hughes – "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," "She's Having a Baby," and "Curly Sue." Casting directors Jane Jenkins and Janet Hirshenson, who worked with Hughes starting in the mid-1980s, recall McClurg as one of their greatest finds in their book "A Star Is Found."

They wrote, "As soon as she walked into the audition room, [Hughes] began to smile. 'Oh yeah,' I thought. 'This was meant to be.' Edie made even the tiniest role sing, and from then on, whenever we were casting a movie, John would say, 'Okay, here's the Edie part!' or 'Wait a minute, how are we going to use Edie?'"

McClurg is still with us, but sadly has been in declining health and possibly the victim of elder abuse in recent years.

To most of those watching "Natural Born Killers," he's Deputy Warden Wurlitzer, one of Warden McClusky's right-hand men. To an audience familiar with downtown New York theater, Everett Quinton was a legend. He'd worked for years with Greenwich Village's Ridiculous Theatrical Company, which was known for gender-blind casting, drag roles, and taking big swipes at societyal norms. Its most famous production, "The Mystery of Irma Vep," a send-up of gothic horror novels, featured seven characters played by two actors — Everett Quinton and his partner, RTC's pioneering artistic director Charles Ludlam. Quinton, who succeeded Ludlam as artistic director after Ludlam's death from AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987, is still acting in and directing Ludlam's plays. He hasn't been as active in films and TV in recent years. After starting out with a baldly stereotypical guest role known only as "Homosexual Pusher" on "Miami Vice," and aside from "NBK," his role as Guggenheim Museum chief James Johnson Sweeney in Ed Harris' "Pollock," and a role in Billy Eichner's recent "Bros," he's mainly stuck to the stage.

And as to why an actor of Quinton's background would have taken a role in "NBK," perhaps it's not as strange as you might think. Quinton told the New York Times in 1994, "An actor has to be able to think he or she could play anything. What's good taste? Charles always said good taste is the enemy of art."

A showbiz vet who's had roles on the fringes, in the trenches, and on the benches, Buffalo native Joe Grifasi is another great character actor who pops up amid the chaos of "Natural Born Killers." With film and TV credits spanning from 1974 to the present — including roles in "The Deer Hunter" (a part he won thanks to his classmate Meryl Streep), HBO's Yankees drama "61*" (as Baseball Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto), ESPN's "The Bronx is Burning" (as Hall of Famer Yogi Berra), and "Heavy" alongside his fellow "NBK" sheriff Pruitt Taylor Vince — Grifasi is likely best known today for his roles as a couple of judges, namely Hashi Horowitz in "Law & Order: SVU" and Arlen Rand in "Bull." He's also had a thriving theater career, with three Drama Desk Award nominations, Broadway credits including two years in the Tony Award-winning Dickens adaptation "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," and appearances at leading NYC non-profits The Public Theater, Second Stage, and Playwrights Horizons. In "NBK," as Deputy Sheriff Duncan Homolka, he has an unfortunate run-in with Mickey and Mallory towards the end of the film and is frog-marched out of the prison as a hostage.

There's an interesting parallel between Balthazar Getty's character "Gas Station Attendant" In "Natural Born Killers" and his character Pete Dayton in David Lynch's "Lost Highway" (made three years apart). For one, both are mechanics. For another, both have some degree of sexual relations with their respective movies' female protagonists. But while Getty in "NBK" winds up dead as a result of delivering, ahem, poor service to Mallory, Pete disappears into a psychogenic fugue that turns him into Bill Pullman. Not enough space to explain that last one — let's just say that there was something about Getty that apparently made him right as an on-screen suitor for both Juliette Lewis and Patricia Arquette. Whatever Balthazar Getty (supposedly) lacked in acting talent, he made up for in smoldering good looks that make you almost forget the fact that he's the great-grandson of the man who founded Getty Oil and the son of a man kidnapped by the Italian mafia, an event dramatized in Ridley Scott's "All the Money in the World."

Getty didn't make many movies after "Lost Highway," but he did go on to play roles in The WB's "Charmed," ABC's "Brothers and Sisters" and "Alias," and worked once again with Lynch in "Twin Peaks: The Return." These days, he runs the record label purplehausrecords which hosts Getty's band Ringside after its initial self-titled release was issued on Fred Durst's Flawless label in 2005. Getty also sits on the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit that fights food insecurity in South Africa.

Why was Woody Harrelson chosen for the role of Mickey Knox in "Natural Born Killers?" Harrelson himself wondered aloud in a 1994 featurette: "I had to ask [Stone], why would you think of me, I mean, all I'd done at that point was 'White Men Can't Jump' and 'Cheers.' And he said, 'I see violence in you.'" In the same featurette, Stone calls Harrelson "a little sick ... he's a little crazy, and I think that's what you need for Mickey." Maybe so. Harrelson's father was indicted for murder twice and handed two life sentences, and his mother was indicted for conspiracy. But for all the furor surrounding "NBK" and performances clearly directed to go over the top, Harrelson claimed, "I was the sanest in the whole group." You can tell from Mickey's calm, zen-like demeanor, dialed up but never unnecessarily. He emerged ready to take on bigger and better roles.

Since "NBK," Harrelson has been nominated for three Oscars – for "The People Vs. Larry Flynt," "The Messenger," and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." He's also been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards. Other memorable roles include Cletus "Carnage" Kasady in the "Venom" films, Haymitch in the "Hunger Games" films, Beckett in "Solo: A Star Wars Story," and President Joe Biden in multiple episodes of "Saturday Night Live." Currently, Harrelson can be seen in Ruben Östlund's Palme D'Or-winning "Triangle of Sadness." Coming up on Harrelson's horizon – "The Most Dangerous Man in America," with Harrelson playing LSD guru Timothy Leary, and the Watergate drama "The White House Plumbers" for HBO.