Rip Torn is 78 years old. Until Friday night, the stupidest thing he’d ever done was Freddy Got Fingered.

That’s now the second-stupidest. Because, on Friday night, Rip Torn was arrested on suspicion of drunkenly forcing himself into a bank with a loaded gun. Read that again if you like – Rip Torn from Men In Black and Robocop 3 was arrested because he apparently got drunk, grabbed a loaded gun and broke into his local bank through a back window.

Which sort of makes Rip Torn the new, drunker OJ Simpson, doesn’t it? Maybe now he’ll write a book called If I Did It, Heresh How It Fuggin Happund Yowld Bashterdsh. We’d read it.

Rip Torn is one of our all-time favourite actors. Not because his portrayal of Artie in The Larry Sanders Show was so indelible, or because his booming, authoritative presence generally improves any film he appears in by about 15%, but because he’s got a bit of a reputation. Rip Torn was supposed to get Jack Nicholson‘s part in Easy Rider until he got into an argument with Dennis Hopper in a restaurant that ended up with knives being held at throats. He once attacked Norman Mailer with a hammer on camera. He’s been arrested for drink driving more times than you could care to count.

And now he’s somehow managed to top it all. On Friday night – and we’re never going to get tired of saying this – Rip Torn was arrested on suspicion of drunkenly crawling through the window of his local Connecticut bank with a loaded gun. Imagine the opening scene of The Dark Knight, but with fewer clown-masked criminals and mercurial high-level deception and more shitfaced 78-year-old men trying to crawl through a window. That’s what we imagine the arrest was like, but Torn’s local newspaper The Register Citizen has firmer ideas:

Torn allegedly forced entry into a Litchfield Bancorp building, at 326 Main St., setting off an alarm. When police responded to the alarm around 9:40 p.m. they found Torn “with a loaded revolver and was highly intoxicated”. Torn allegedly entered the bank through a back window, police confirmed. The small bank appeared untouched in the front and on its left and right sides.

Thanks to all this, Rip Torn was charged with carrying a pistol without a permit, carrying a firearm while intoxicated, first-degree burglary, first-degree criminal trespass and third-degree criminal mischief. We’re not sure what the punishment is for such a vast array of alleged crimes, but if there’s any justice in the world, he’ll be made King Of The Planet and have a crown and everything.

Also, if there are any Connecticut judges reading, we honestly think that you should show Rip Torn a little bit of leniency. After all, if he wasn’t arrested for this then we would have never got to use his mugshot to accompany this article. And it really is a beautiful mugshot.

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