American actor, director, producer and writer
John Michael Turturro (born February 28, 1957) is an American actor, director, producer and writer. He is known for his contributions to 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, and received early critical recognition with the independent film Five Corners (1987). Turturro's mainstream breakthrough came with Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) and the Coens' Miller's Crossing (1990) and Barton Fink (1991), for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. His subsequent roles included Herb Stempel in Quiz Show (1994), Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski (1998) and The Jesus Rolls (2020), Pete in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Seymour Simmons in the Transformers film series and is set to play Carmine Falcone in The Batman. In 2016, in a lead role, he portrayed a lawyer in the HBO miniseries The Night Of. He 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 (1992), which won the Golden Camera Award at the Cannes Film Festival, Illuminata (1998), and Romance and Cigarettes (2005).
People are never too young or too old to look for human connection.
It's great to watch someone get the most out of what they can do, whether they're a beautiful performer or just a really gritty performer. It's something to behold.
My interest lies in my self-expression -- what's inside of me -- not what I'm in.
If I was a criminal, stationery stores and bakeries would be the two kinds of places I would concentrate on.
The past has to inform the present...
Even people within a relationship can be really alone, and then have to go outside of it in order to find something, whatever it is. It may be very bizarre and maybe something very tender.
One thing I have is that I have never been afraid to expose myself in a way, and I really think I got that from my mother. That's a great gift you can give to a child, that they have confidence in their abilities.
I come from a very expressive family, so it's really not surprising that we became actors. There was a lot of real-life drama in our house. Some of it was drama, some of it was comedy and some of it was comic-tragedy.
The nice thing about Toronto is there's not a competition.
I make a list of what I have in common, and what I don't have in common, with someone I'm playing
My sensitivity level is high, but I think that's one of my assets as an actor.
I think you learn more from looking at how things occurred and what happened afterward, not just at the event
I've always liked clothes. I usually work very closely with the costume designer when I work on films, picking the fabrics and the clothes. And colors convey feelings. I like swatches and things like that. It makes me feel at home.
Levi is one of the best authors I've ever read. It's hard not to have an immediate personal response to his work. He has such a quiet tone.
In my first film, Five Corners, I played a very scary, violent crazed character, and it exposed me to a lot of directors.
A lot of films need planning in order to survive at all. It's part of the dog and pony show
Al Michaels is a good announcer. I think Keith Jackson is a terrific announcer. I always loved him on Monday Night Football. I never understood why they got rid of him
In a lot of movies, honestly, the directors don't talk to you that much. Maybe they say, "Faster, slower," whatever. Sometimes they give you little adjustments, because sometimes you want to start out neutral, but a lot of times you wind up directing yourself anyway, just doing what you think is the right thing to do.
When you're directing, it is a little easier, because when you're the actor, you have a to be a little more of a child. You have to get into the child's aspect of your personality a little bit more.
When I see these guys write all this macho stuff I want to smash their heads.
Games sometimes can reveal things. To watch someone in movement, unconscious movement, can be very stimulating and revealing, whether they win or not
It's nice to work with people who know and trust you.
A lot of those people aren't their best salesmen. They're the opposite of a salesperson and I think there's something attractive about that.
The romance stuff is easy. A sex scene... that's hard, because you don't know what to do. Those scenes are awkward.
You think of stars as ambitious or aggressive or self-oriented.
I think I've had more of a variety in what I've done than most actors
I play chess badly and I've been beaten by my 10-year old son
I love to act, and I try to be challenged by what I do