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John Turturro
Turturro at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	John Michael Turturro (1957-02-28) February 28, 1957 (age 67) New York City, U.S.
Citizenship	United States Italy
Education	State University of New York, New Paltz (BA) Yale University (MFA)
Occupations	Actor director producer screenwriter
Years active	1980–present
Spouse	Katherine Borowitz ​(m. 1985)​
Children	2
Relatives	Nicholas Turturro (brother) Aida Turturro (cousin) Richard Termini (cousin)

John Michael Turturro (/tərˈtʊəroʊ/ Italian pronunciation: [turˈturro]; born February 28, 1957) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his varied complex roles in independent films. He has appeared in over sixty feature films and has worked frequently with the Coen brothers, Adam Sandler, and Spike Lee. He has received a Primetime Emmy Award and nominations for four Screen Actors Guild Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.

He received his career breakthrough with Five Corners (1987). He acted in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), and Clockers (1995). He also starred in Coens' Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), for which he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, The Big Lebowski (1998), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). He also starred in Fearless (1993), Quiz Show (1994), and Gloria Bell (2018). He portrayed Seymour Simmons in the Transformers film series (2007–2017) and Carmine Falcone in The Batman (2022).

For playing the role of Ambrose Monk, Adrian Monk's brother, in the USA Network series Monk, Turturro received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. He starred in the HBO miniseries The Night Of (2016) earning a nomination for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. He had a recurring role in the Showtime series The Plot Against America (2020), and he currently stars in the Apple TV+ series Severance (2022–present), for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Television Series.

He has directed five films, Mac (1992), Illuminata (1998), Romance and Cigarettes (2005), Fading Gigolo (2013), and The Jesus Rolls (2020).

Early life and education

John Turturro was born on February 28, 1957, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, the son of Katherine Florence (Incerella) and Nicholas Turturro. His mother was born in the U.S. to Sicilian parents with roots in Sicily, and was an amateur jazz singer who had worked in a naval yard during World War II. His maternal grandmother died of a botched home abortion when his mother was six, leaving his mother in an orphanage, as his grandfather was unable to provide for the children on his own. His father had emigrated at age six from Giovinazzo, Italy to the United States, and later worked as a carpenter and construction worker before joining the U.S. Navy.

Turturro was raised as a Catholic and moved to the Rosedale section of Queens, New York, with his family when he was 6. He graduated from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts in theater studies. He later did graduate study at the Yale School of Drama, receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1983.

Career

Turturro's first film appearance was a non-speaking extra role in Raging Bull (1980). 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. (1985), as the henchman of the villainous counterfeiter played by Willem Dafoe.

Spike Lee liked Turturro's performance in Five Corners (1987) so much that he cast him in Do the Right Thing (1989). This movie was the first of a long-standing collaboration between the director and Turturro, which includes work together on a total of nine films—more than any other actor in the Lee oeuvre—including Mo' Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), He Got Game (1998), Summer of Sam (1999), She Hate Me (2004), and Miracle at St. Anna (2008).

Turturro has appeared in both comedy and drama films, and engaged in an extended collaboration with the Coen Brothers—he appeared in their films Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991, in the lead role), The Big Lebowski (1998), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Turturro has also appeared in several of Adam Sandler's movies, such as Mr. Deeds (2002) and You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008). 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 witnessed 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 (1999), which also starred his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz. He wrote and directed the film Romance and Cigarettes (2005). 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 (and had cameo on-screen appearances in) 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 (TIFF) 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 and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. In 2019 Turturro played William of Baskerville in a television adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

In 2022, he appeared in Matt Reeves' film The Batman based on the DC Comics character of the same name as Carmine Falcone. In 2023 he starred as Mickey Sabbath in the off-Broadway adaptation of Philip Roth's novel Sabbath's Theater by The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

Personal life

Turturro's brother is actor Nicholas Turturro. Composer and film director Richard Termini and actress Aida Turturro are his cousins. He has one son and one daughter with his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz, who moved on to a social work career in 2016.

John Turturro participates as a member of the Jury for the New York International Children's Film Festival (NYICFF), which is dedicated to screening films for children between the ages of 3 and 18. Turturro holds dual Italian and American citizenship as of January 2011.

He has lived in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York since 1988.

Filmography

Film

Television

Video games

Audiobooks

Theatre

Awards and nominations

This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "John Turturro" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

References

1. "John Turturro's 'Passione': Going Behind the Lens With "The Big Lebowski" Actor Turned Director" on YouTube
2. "TURTURRO BURNS THROUGH THREE VERSIONS OF REALITY IN 'LIFE (X) 3'". Saint Paul Pioneer Press. June 1, 2003. Retrieved March 27, 2009.
3. "John Turturro Biography - Yahoo! Movies". Movies.yahoo.com. February 28, 1957. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
4. Stated on Finding Your Roots, October 31, 2017
5. John Turturro (July 8, 2022). "My grandmother's botched abortion transformed three generations". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409.
6. ^ Pfefferman, Naomi (April 19, 1998). "Far Beyond Tears". The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Retrieved April 7, 2017.
7. ^ Shoard, Catherine (September 12, 2013). "John Turturro on nuns, Woody Allen and middle-aged sex". The Guardian. Retrieved September 13, 2013.
8. ^ Akers, W.M. (September 19, 2011). "The Long and the Short of It". The New York Observer -Fall Arts Preview.
9. ^ John Turturro at IMDb
10. Scott, A. O. (June 21, 2011). "Soaring From Poverty All the Way to Ecstasy". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
11. Morgenstern, Hans. "John Turturro Receives Career Tribute Award at Miami International Film Festival". Miami New Times. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
12. Scarnato, Ryden (March 28, 2020). "The Batman: John Turturro Opens Up About His Role As Carmine Falcone". Heroic Hollywood. Retrieved March 6, 2022.
13. Sabbath's Theater
14. Alexis Soloski, "'Sabbath’s Theater' Review: John Turturro Embodies a Life and a Libido", The New York Times, November 3, 2023.
15. "Ralph Turturro". Bergen Museum of Art and Science. 2014. Retrieved February 23, 2018.
16. "NYICFF Jury". Gkids.com. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
17. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "John Turturro and His New Italian Passport". YouTube. January 27, 2011. Retrieved August 15, 2012.
18. Hettich, Colter (April 25, 2017). "John Turturro talks about Brooklyn's past and future while riding the B train". AM NY. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
19. ^ "John Turturro (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved December 21, 2024. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.
20. Scheib, Ronnie (May 25, 2004). "Review: '2B Perfectly Honest'". Variety. Retrieved February 28, 2017.
21. Siegel, Tatiana (May 15, 2016). "Cannes: Jenny Slate to Reunite With Obvious Child Team for Comedy Landline (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
22. Kroll, Justin (November 16, 2017). "John Turturro and Newcomer Caren Pistorius Join Julianne Moore in Gloria (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
23. Setoodeh, Ramin (August 24, 2017). "Jaeden Lieberher, John Turturro to Star in The True Adventures of Wolfboy (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
24. "'Big Lebowski' Spinoff 'Going Places' Already Shooting, with John Turturro Directing and Starring as The Jesus". indiewire.com. August 17, 2016. Retrieved August 17, 2016.
25. D'Alessandro, Anthony (August 19, 2020). "Cate Blanchett, Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton & More Round Out Cast For Guillermo del Toro Netflix Pinocchio Movie". Deadline. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
26. Verma, Shikhar (September 29, 2022). "Forty Winks [2022] Review - A visually distinctive but inert debut feature that has nothing to say". High On Films. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
27. Brooks, Xan (September 2, 2024). "The Room Next Door review – Almodóvar spins a gorgeous, fragile tale of life and death". The Guardian. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
28. ‘Severance’: John Turturro To Star In Apple Drama Series
29. Otterson, Joe (June 29, 2022). "Michaela Coel, John Turturro, Paul Dano Join Donald Glover & Maya Erskine in Mr. and Mrs. Smith Amazon Series". Variety. Retrieved January 4, 2023.
30. "John Turturro". abouttheartists.com. Retrieved August 31, 2021.
31. "Sabbath's Theater".
32. "John Turturro". Playbill. Retrieved August 31, 2021.
33. "John Turturro - Emmy Awards, Nominations, and Wins". Emmy Awards. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
34. Tinoco, Armando (August 12, 2022). "Saturn Awards Nominations: 'The Batman', 'Nightmare Alley', 'Spider-Man', 'Better Call Saul' Top List". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved September 22, 2022.
35. "Winners & Nominees 2023". www.goldenglobes.com. Retrieved December 13, 2022.
36. "76th Emmy Awards Complete Nominations List" (PDF). Television Academy. July 17, 2024. Retrieved July 18, 2024.
37. "John Turturro to Receive Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival". sff.ba. July 17, 2024. Retrieved August 21, 2024.

External links

• John Turturro at IMDb
• John Turturro at the Internet Broadway Database
• John Turturro at the Internet Off-Broadway Database

• 1957 births
• Living people
• People of Sicilian descent
• American male film actors
• American male screenwriters
• American male stage actors
• American male television actors
• American male voice actors
• American people of Italian descent
• American writers of Italian descent
• Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor winners
• David di Donatello winners
• Directors of Caméra d'Or winners
• Film directors from New York City
• Male actors from Brooklyn
• Male actors from Queens, New York
• Obie Award recipients
• People from Park Slope
• People from Rosedale, Queens
• People of Apulian descent
• Primetime Emmy Award winners
• Screenwriters from New York (state)
• State University of New York at New Paltz alumni
• David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University alumni
• 20th-century American male actors
• 21st-century American male actors