Verne Troyer

The thing about Verne Troyer and Mini-Me is that he didn’t mail it in. He could have—it was already a silly character, already funny just by existing—but instead he committed completely, understood the timing and the physicality, made it work without it tipping into cruelty. That’s harder than it sounds.

He died at 49. Depression, alcohol—the combination that kills a lot of people, especially people who spend their career being charming and professional while something underneath just eats away at them. A few weeks before the end he was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, and I imagine by that point he knew how it was going to go.

His filmography is scattered. Austin Powers, obviously. Men in Black. Harry Potter. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That insane Gilliam film. Small parts across decades of films, always the same thing: show up, do the work, don’t complain. There’s a kind of dignity in that, in understanding your place and executing it perfectly.

The interviews are rough to watch now because he was clearly intelligent, articulate, genuinely interested in cinema and the people he worked with. No self-pity. He’d talk about his experiences like someone who understood he’d been given opportunities and meant to make the most of them. And the whole time, clearly, something was breaking.

Mike Myers said something nice after—that Troyer was a beacon of positivity on set, the perfect professional. Probably true. But it’s also the thing you say about someone after they’re gone, when you realize there was a gap between how they showed up and what they were actually carrying.