"Being a bad guy isn't really my thing," Michael Champion told the Feather River Bulletin in 1988. However, his agent convinced him it was lucrative work, so he stuck with it. The son of an Indiana policeman, Champion championed many quality "bad guy" roles — a white supremacist gang leader in "Pink Cadillac," a bodyguard in "Beverly Hills Cop," a terrorist in "Toy Soldiers," and Michael Ironside's crotchety sidekick Helm, who meets an uncomfortable demise in "Total Recall."
Before he had a fruitful acting career, Champion had one in the music industry, credited under the name Michael Campbell, According to a Facebook tribute written by his sister, Champion worked with Meat Loaf, Mitch Ryder, and at Motown with The Jackson 5. He co-wrote the latter's "Joyful Jukebox Music," was in the band Abstract Reality, and even turned down Ted Nugent's offer to join his. Motown sent Champion to Los Angeles, where drugs and alcohol consumed him, but he found a better path forward in sobriety, religion, and the structure that acting provided. Champion made rounds on TV shows like "The Incredible Hulk," "Knight Rider," "ALF," and "Star Trek: The Next Generation," as well as parts in films as diverse as "When A Stranger Calls" and Mel Brooks' "History of the World: Part 1."
He retired from the industry in 1996 and moved to Casper, Wyoming, but was lured out of it a few times, including for one project called "The Magical Proposal," where he even poked fun at his "Total Recall" infamy.
Champion died in 2021, at age 74.
