"I think Mike was everybody's favorite actor. I don't know anyone who wouldn't say that," said Sally Dietlein, one of the co-owners of the Hale Center Theater, where Mike West-enskow had performed in one dozen comedies and dramas.
Westenskow, 29, who died early Friday morning in a one-car accident on I-80 near the mouth of Parleys Canyon, will be honored by his many friends and colleagues in the Salt Lake theater community during a special memorial service tonight at 9 p.m. at the Hale Center Theater, 2801 S. Main.Bob Bedore, who had performed with Westenskow in Desert Star Playhouse's comic parody, "A Christmas Carol II," said Friday morning, "Mike and I were very close. I started acting with him at HCT in `Heaven Can Wait.'
"He was so intelligent as an actor. I knew that if I came up with a (spur-of-the-moment) joke on stage, I could deliver the setup and he could come through with a punch line without even rehearsing it. That was something I really respected."
Bedore and Westenskow had also both worked together - but not as actors - at the Salt Lake Hilton and the Stein Erickson Lodge in Deer Valley, where Westenskow had been working late Thursday night.
The accident apparently occurred as he was returning to Salt Lake after work.
Westenskow had played the linebacker-size Tiny Tim opposite Bedore's Bob Cratchit in DSP's "Christmas Carol" and had memorable roles as bumbling Will Stockdale in HCT's "No Time for Sergeants," Ellard Simms in "The Foreigner," Jim Curry in "The Rainmaker," and daydreamer Richard Sherman in StageRight's "The Seven-Year Itch."
Most audiences will remember Westenskow as a gifted humorist with an uncanny sense of comedy timing. He was serious about his craft and in his application for the University of Utah's actor training program, he had written: "I would love to make my living doing anything that has to do with the theater or film . . . I can't imagine my life without it."
His most recent television appearance was as Sheriff Paul Burlson in the final episode of ABC's miniseries, "The Stand."