John Turturro
John Michael Turturro is an American-Italian actor, writer and filmmaker, known for his association with the independent film movement. He has appeared in over sixty feature films and has worked frequently with the Coen brothers, Adam Sandler and Spike Lee. He began his acting career on-screen in the early 1980s, with his mainstream breakthrough coming with Lee's Do the Right Thing and the Coens' Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. His subsequent roles included Herb Stempel in Quiz Show, Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski and The Jesus Rolls, Pete in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Seymour Simmons in the Transformers film series and Carmine Falcone in the DC Extended Universe. In 2016, in a lead role, he portrayed a lawyer in the HBO miniseries The Night Of and had a recurring role in the miniseries The Plot Against America in 2020.
An Emmy Award winner, Turturro has also been nominated for four Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Independent Spirit Awards. He directed Mac, which won the Golden Camera Award at the Cannes Film Festival, Illuminata, and Romance and Cigarettes.
Early life
John Turturro was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Katherine Florence and Nicholas Turturro. His mother was born in the U.S., to Italian parents with roots in Sicily, and was an amateur jazz singer, who had worked in a naval yard during World War II. His father had immigrated to the United States from Giovinazzo, Italy, at age six and later worked as a carpenter and construction worker before joining the U.S. Navy.Turturro was raised a Roman Catholic and moved to the Rosedale section of Queens, New York with his family, when he was six. He majored in Theatre Arts at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and completed his MFA at the Yale School of Drama.
Career
Turturro's first film appearance was a non-speaking extra role in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed Raging Bull. He created the title role of John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at the Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in 1983. He repeated it the following year Off-Broadway and won an Obie Award. Turturro had a notable supporting role in William Friedkin's action film To Live and Die in L.A., as the henchman of the villainous counterfeiter played by Willem Dafoe.Spike Lee liked Turturro's performance in Five Corners so much that he cast him in Do the Right Thing. This movie was the first of a long-standing collaboration between the director and Turturro, which includes work together on a total of nine filmsmore than any other actor in the Lee oeuvreincluding Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Clockers, Girl 6, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, She Hate Me, and Miracle at St. Anna.
Turturro has appeared in both comedy and drama films, and engaged in an extended collaboration with the Coen Brothershe appeared in their films Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Turturro has also appeared in several of Adam Sandler's movies, such as Mr. Deeds and You Don't Mess with the Zohan. He played a severely disturbed patient of Jack Nicholson's character in the comedy Anger Management and played Johnny Depp's character's antagonist in Secret Window.
Turturro hosted Saturday Night Live in 1994, where he spoofed his then-recently made film, Quiz Show, being told he was ineligible to host unless he answered questions in a booth and if he failed, the honor of hosting would go to Joey Buttafuoco, who was actually backstage to witness Turturro's test. He won an Emmy award for his portrayal of Adrian Monk's brother Ambrose in the USA Network series Monk, and reprised the role on numerous occasions. He has also been nominated and won many awards from film organizations such as Screen Actors Guild, Cannes Film Festival, Golden Globes and others.
Turturro produced and directed, as well as acted in, the film Illuminata, which also starred his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz. He wrote and directed the film Romance and Cigarettes. In 2006 he appeared in Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd, and as the Sector 7 agent Seymour Simmons in four films of the Transformers live-action series. In 2010, he directed Passione, which chronicles the rich musical heritage of Naples, Italy.
His stage directorial debut was in October 2011, with the Broadway play Relatively Speaking, in which he guided an ensemble of veteran actors in a production of three comedic one-act plays, written by Elaine May, Woody Allen and Ethan Coen. The cast included Julie Kavner, Marlo Thomas, Mark Linn-Baker and Steve Guttenberg.
Turturro's fifth directorial film Fading Gigolo premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in mid-September 2013. Turturro also acts in the film alongside Woody Allen, who plays a novice pimp overseeing the sex work of Turturro's character. During a September 2013 interview, Turturro expressed his intention to draw parallels between sex work and acting, explaining that the latter is a "service business" in which actors are "acting out people's wishes or fantasies". In March 2014, Turturro received the Career Achievement tribute and award at the 31st Edition of the Miami International Film Festival at the Olympia Theater in Downtown Miami. Turturro starred in the 2016 miniseries The Night Of, garnering a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Personal life
Turturro's brother is actor Nicholas Turturro. Abstract painter Ralph Turturro, Composer and film director Richard Termini, and actress Aida Turturro are his cousins. He has two sons: Amedeo and Diego, with his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz.John Turturro participates as a member of the Jury for the New York International Children's Film Festival, which is dedicated to screening films for children between the ages of 3 and 18. Turturro holds dual Italian and American citizenship, and in January 2011 received his Italian passport.
He has lived in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York since 1988.