John Turturro is 69 years old today. He was born on 28 February 1957.
Turturro is one of the best actors alive. I feel a little strange highlighting him. But he also takes really interesting roles in really interesting films.
A good example is the character Pino Frangione in Do The Right Thing. The character is as racist as can be. During the filming of it, one of the young crew members had a near-breakdown because his racist rants were so real. He was also in three other Spike Lee films.
And then there is Brain Donors. In it, Turturro plays Roland T Flakfizer, an unscrupulous attorney who literally chases ambulances. It is a crazy film where he does an excellent Groucho Marx without doing an impression. It is tons of fun!
There are so many other interesting films with Turturro. He gets cast as some fairly crazy characters. For example, there’s The Search for One-Eye Jimmy (1994). And his creepy neighbor character in Secret Window. Or his insane turn as a chess master in The Luzhin Defence. And there is him playing a fairly normal character in the excellent Fear X.
John Turturro is probably most associated with the Coen Brothers. For example, he plays a shockingly believable psychopath in Miller’s Crossing. And he plays The Jesus in The Big Lebowski and the difficult Pete in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
But the film I want to highlight is Barton Fink. It is a horror comedy classic. Turturro plays an understandable but extremely annoying young writer with his first job in Hollywood. He kind of hooks up with a serial killer, which is only one of the many things that go wrong for him. It’s similar to my worst nightmares!
Image cropped from John Turturro by PhilipRomanoPhoto under CC BY 4.0.