Still, Reedus' career doesn't start out like many other actors. He's into music videos. In the early nineties he can be seen in the clip of Keith Richard's 'Wicked as it seems' and Björk's 'Violently Happy'. This is followed by a series of twenty films in which Reedus plays a role. The most famous of these are probably The Boondock Saints and Blade II.
It is already 2003 when Reedus plays in a series for the first time. At that time, however, he had been in the business for more than ten years. The supernatural series Charmed (1998), about three witch sisters who are regularly harassed by demons and other thugs from the underworld, has the scoop.
Although Reedus can mainly be seen in films during that period, he occasionally appears in a series. He has a small guest role in Masters of Horror and he plays a one-off in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. However, these are also the years in which the actor has perhaps his best film role, in the extremely tight action film American Gangster. Although his role is small, it puts him further on the map in television land.
The Chase, a miniseries starring Hilary Duff and Michael Laurence, has been well received. Reedus plays a stalker - much like Laurence - who gets more than he bargains for when he goes after Mogan (Duff). In 2010 followed a guest role in Hawaii Five-0.
Yet 2010 is not the year we remember Reedus playing a role in a series on a supposedly very criminal American island. In the same America, a series - based on a comic series - starts with six blood-curdling episodes about zombies. The entire States are in ruins, there are enough survivors, but they are fighting for each other's lives. And then there are those rotten, smelly, walking corpses that prove to be a nuisance in all sorts of ways. The first season of The Walking Dead is very strong and exciting.
Reedus plays Daryl Dixon, Merle's (Michael Rooker) brother. They have always been used to a hard life and do not fit into a house-tree-animal society. Yet they are forced to survive in a group. Daryl's survival skills in particular come in handy here. Reedus knows how to make his Daryl a strong character with substance. The relationship with his sniffed brother - and later with Carol (Melissa McBride) - gives the character depth, making him less of a loner than he otherwise would have been. And that quickly makes Daryl Dixon one of the most beloved Walking Dead characters.
Although the quality of the series fluctuates with the seasons - and sometimes falls to a somewhat questionable level - Reedus is a constant factor. He provides the voice in the game series of the same name, appears in character in, for example, The Soup and, due to its popularity, becomes a regular guest on Saturday Night Live, Conan (2010) and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, among others. The Walking Dead is alive.
If you are known, doors will open for you. In the case of Reedus, this applies, among other things, to the recording of voices in animated series. That's how we hear him in American Dad! and Turbo FAST - based on the film about the fast snail - and he also lends his voice in Voltron: Legendary Defender and Robot Chicken. Ballmastrz 9009 will follow later. A documentary entitled Ride with Norman Reedus is something completely different. Something in which the actor discovers the local motorcycle culture.
Helluva Boss is currently Reedus' last aired project. Those who really want to see him in recent work will mainly have to watch music videos. He stars in Orville Peck's 'The Curse of the Blackened Eye' and in Run the Jewels' 'Never Look Back'. He can also be seen in the video 'Don't Chase the Dead' by Marilyn Manson.
However, the series drought won't last long, mainly due to the upcoming The Walking Dead spin-off. While the series has gotten quite a few in the past, this expansion of the undead universe is eagerly awaited. In The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, the title hero washes up on the French coast, only to face all kinds of new dangers on his way home. The enthusiast can sit down for it again. And if you really want to go back to basics, turn on those very first six episodes again...
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