To a generation of movie fans, M. Emmet Walsh was often the first name that came to mind when somebody used the label “character actor.”

That wasn’t by accident. The Coens launched him to prominence as a pitiless Texas hitman in “Blood Simple,” and turned him loose in a “character” part in “Raising Arizona” so’s we could see how funny he could be.

And then, unless my memory is playing tricks on me, “Siskel & Ebert” in one of the incarnations of their movie review show, did an entire episode on just this one guy. “Character actor.” We all knew what one was thanks to them. And to them the quintessential character actor of his era might have been Mr. Walsh.

“Blade Runner” to “Straight Time,” “Clean and Sober” to “Critters” to “Reds” to “The Milagro Beanfield War” to “The Mighty Quinn,” a decade or two of bit parts in film and on TV, and then all of a sudden he started turning up in everything.

Wilfred Brimley did mostly cuddly curmudgeons or no nonsense authority figures, to name Walsh’s chief rival for a lot of roles. Walsh played a much wider range of cranks and sadists and drunks and bullies and crooked cops and clowns. A native New Yorker, he made a pretty mean Southerner when he had to. “Blood Simple” sold that.

He had 234 acting credits, and did a delightfully sketchy turn in Mario Van Peebles’ “Outlaw Posse,” which came out a couple of weeks ago.

He learned to play the piano for “Cannery Row” (Doctor John doubled the “Real” boogie woogie) and sang in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” That little punchline in one of the greatest rom-com moments in all of cinema might have been his biggest on-screen fright. Singing is scary.

Roger Ebert later made a “Harry Dean Stanton/M. Emmet Walsh rule,” that no movie with either of them in it was a total write-off. Not a bad rule.

Here’s what I rememember about Walsh from the two movies he made in a city where I reviewed movies and covered film production for the local newspaper. “The Music of Chance” and “The Lottery” were shot in greater Winston-Salem, years apart. The first was a classic “troubled production.” But not because of the ever-unfussy Walsh. Mandy Patinkin was the co-star, so need I say more.

On “The Lottery,” he was a grandfatherly presence on the set, putting on no airs, making no fuss, always happiest when people with little kids would stop by to watch him work.

He’d chat with them, and he’d give them something to remember him by — a 1943 steel Lincoln head penny. Not sure why he chose that, but they were rarely in circulation any more, cheap because they were plentiful, and it was a nice little thing he could do for a child meeting his or her first movie star.

I was too old to ask at the time, and it wouldn’t have been cool or particularly professional (we were a little more concerned with that in the pre-social media “influencer” reviewer era) to say “Hey, don’t I get a penny?” But damn, I wanted one of those “steelies.”

Damned fine actor, too. Rest in peace.