No One Deserves To Be Remembered Only for the Way They Died

Trigger Warning: This piece discusses suicide, depression, and graphic details surrounding a death. Please take care while reading.

Nicky Katt died on April 8th, and it hit me in a weird spot because while Nicky Katt was never a hugely famous actor—or even a particularly well-known one outside of certain circles—he was part of that Linklater brat pack. I grew up watching that guy on screen. I never went to see a movie because of Nicky Katt, but I always recognized and appreciated him.

With some exceptions—most notably, his one major television role in David E. Kelley’s Boston Public—Katt played bad guys. He’d play the white supremacist, the bully, the rich asshole. Someone has to play those roles. And maybe Katt played them so often that people began to think of him that way. I don’t know.

Earlier this week, we found out how Katt died, because the ever-ghoulish TMZ splashed it across their homepage in all caps, as though bragging that they had the inside scoop on how a human being died. Katt hanged himself about a week after his landlord asked him to pay his rent. He was found by that same landlord. He’d been dead for at least a day or two.

That is to say: Nicky Katt died alone and broke at the age of 54, and it’s been weighing on me all week. No one should be remembered for the way they died. But it’s been burned into my brain by an online tabloid. “No note was found,” TMZ wrote, as though that were an important part of the story. At least Deadline had just enough class to post the statement from Nicky Katt’s sister. It read, in part:

I am deeply saddened that the details of my brother’s passing were made public without my consent at a time when our family was still trying to process the shock and grief of his loss.

Today, with the heaviest of hearts, I share the devastating news of my brother’s passing. He died by suicide after battling with depression—one that he fought bravely but quietly.

This is a pain no family should endure, yet far too many do. Mental illness is real, it is powerful, and it is often invisible. We hope that by sharing this, we can help break the silence and stigma that so often surrounds mental health struggles.

In this moment of grief, we kindly ask for compassion—not only for our family as we mourn this unimaginable loss—but for every person who is silently struggling. We also ask for privacy to navigate this tragedy and begin the process of healing.

I am all too familiar with suicide. Too many members of my family have attempted—and in most cases, succeeded—in taking their own lives. But I knew them well enough, and long enough, that it’s not how I remember them.

It’s not how I want to remember Nicky Katt, either. The obits for Katt have name-checked a lot of his more famous movies—Dazed and Confused, Boiler Room, Sin City—but aside from Boston Public, which I loved, I remember him best for SubUrbia, a 1996 Richard Linklater film written by Eric Bogosian. It’s one of the few movies for which I’ve ever read the screenplay.

It’s a great film. It also stars Parker Posey, Steve Zahn, Giovanni Ribisi, and Ajay Naidu, all of whom continue to have careers with at least modest levels of success. I wish that Nicky Katt had been able to continue his. But depression is insidious, and the industry is fickle. He never got the White Lotus or Silo or Avatar role to resurrect his career.

But he was so good in SubUrbia, y’all. He played a burnout, loser racist who thought he was owed something by virtue of being a white American (sound familiar?). The character had just enough vulnerability that the audience thought he might actually redeem himself and see the error of his ways. But that’s just not how these characters really work. Eric Bogosian knew that, and Katt gave what I thought at the time—and still do—a tremendously good performance as a shitbag.

That’s how I’m going to try and remember him—not as a shitbag, but as a tremendously good actor brave enough to take on those roles that might have killed another actor’s career. That might have ultimately killed Nicky Katt’s. I hope he’s found some peace, and may his memory—in all those film and television roles and in his life—be a blessing.