Tom Waits and the Slow Normalization of Weirdness

Back in 1986, the world witnessed the first film to feature as a co-star the one-man carnival that is Tom Waits, in Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law. Since then, Waits’s movie roles — always as gloriously strange as his musical personae — seemed to grow increasingly odder, until a tipping point came where we got to know him so well that his strangeness somehow started seeming normal. Four decades on, he’s Adam Driver’s dad in another Jarmusch journey, Father Mother Sister Brother.

Has Waits’s cinematic self grown more prosaic, or have we gotten weirder? Let’s lean into some highlights and try to figure it out.

Down by Law (1986)

By the time he played the hipster radio DJ and jailbird Zack in Jim Jarmusch’s third film, Waits had made minor appearances in several movies. But when he played one-third of a blackly comedic, postmodern Marx Brothers trio alongside Roberto Benigni and fellow musician John Lurie, the offbeat charm and boho charisma he brought to his songs finally had enough onscreen real estate to make an impact. Whether swinging down the street, trapped in a Sartre-esque cellblock, or racing through the wilderness in a desperate dash for freedom, Waits came across like nobody audiences had seen before.

Ironweed (1987)

Thrown into the deep end almost immediately, Waits followed Down by Law by holding his own between Jack Nicholson and Meryl freakin’ Streep. As Rudy, the rummy sidekick to two down-and-out Depression-era alcoholics, Waits rounds out another idiosyncratic trio. Rudy feels like a crystallization of all the oddball rounders Waits portrayed in song during his ’70s Bukowski-at-the-piano phase — tragic, battered, and strangely charming.

Cold Feet (1989)

Waits becomes the loose cannon of yet another eccentric trio in this twisted Western written by novelist Thomas McGuane. Playing Kenny, a hootin’, hollerin’, hyperkinetic, murder-minded lunatic, Waits lets it all hang out. This is the kind of character who doesn’t hesitate to hold children at gunpoint or ride across the West on a homicidal whim.

 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

It’s not just that Waits portrays Renfield — Count Dracula’s insect-devouring manservant — like he was born for the role. It’s tempting to believe Bram Stoker somehow foresaw the 20th-century man who would eventually inhabit the character. Waits chews scenery with relish, when he isn’t chewing literal vermin, indulging what feels like a lifelong fantasy of gothic grotesquerie.

Mystery Men (1999)

In a natural leap from Dracula’s deranged henchman, Waits turns mad scientist in Mystery Men. His Doc Heller seems lifted straight from his own songbook, supplying second-rate superheroes with inventions like a tornado in a can and the Blame Thrower — a device designed solely to start arguments. Extra delight: his attempt to seduce an elderly woman into a three-way at a retirement-home party.

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

Set in a purgatorial afterlife for suicide victims — identical to our world, just a little worse — Wristcutters casts Waits as Kneller, a mysterious agent of change. At first he seems like a benevolent camp counselor crossed with a commune leader, but there’s something deeper and stranger lurking beneath his crooked grin.

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Yes, of course Tom Waits is one of the seven psychopaths. But he’s not just any killer. Zachariah Rigby is a serial killer who kills serial killers — a meta-antihero wandering through a wry murderfest alongside Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson, and Christopher Walken.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

Some argue an actor hasn’t reached peak quirk until he has appeared in a Coen brothers film. If so, Waits checks that box with gusto. As a haggard old prospector in one of the anthology’s segments, he croons a tune while hunting for gold — and, without spoilers, homicide may or may not follow.

The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

In the film that features Robert Redford’s final starring role, Waits plays one of his aging partners-in-crime alongside Danny Glover. As Waller, he adds just enough eccentricity to keep the trio lively without tipping the film into caricature — a restrained weirdness in service of warmth and charm.

Father Mother Sister Brother (2025)

Four decades after Down by Law, Waits reunites with Jim Jarmusch for Father Mother Sister Brother, playing the father of Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik. There’s nothing overtly freaky here — no mad science, no murder, no hipster criminality. He’s just a seventy-something dad. The only strangeness comes from the fact that it’s Tom Waits. After a lifetime of extremes, the final surprise may be how ordinary he’s willing to be.