John Turturro

He achieved 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 the 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? He also starred in Fearless (1993), Quiz Show (1994), and Gloria Bell (2018); and portrayed Seymour Simmons in the Transformers film series (2007–2011, 2017) and Carmine Falcone in The Batman (2022). For his guest role in the USA Network comedy series Monk, Turturro received a Primetime Emmy Award. He has also starred in the HBO thriller miniseries The Night Of (2016), the HBO miniseries The Plot Against America (2020), and the Apple TV+ thriller series Severance (2022–present). He has directed five films, Mac (1992), Illuminata (1998), Romance and Cigarettes (2005), Fading Gigolo (2013), and The Jesus Rolls (2020).

John Turturro studied at Yale School of Drama, State University of New York at New Paltz and State University of New York. The recorded working language is English and Italian. Residence is recorded at Park Slope. Works named in the authority record are The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink, Quiz Show, The Night Of and Transformers. Distinctions recorded are Theatre World Award, Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series and Caméra d'Or.

• Name — John Turturro • Birth Name — John Michael Turturro • Born — 28 February 1957 • Birthplace — New York City, U.S. • Citizenship — * United States • Italy • Occupation — * Actor • director • producer • screenwriter • Years Active — 1980–present • Children — 2, including Arianna • Relatives — * Nicholas Turturro (brother) • Aida Turturro (cousin) • Richard Termini (cousin)

John Turturro was born on February 28, 1957 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the middle son of Katherine Florence (Incerella) and Nicholas Turturro. His mother was born in the U.S. to parents with roots in Aragona, Sicily, Italy, and was an amateur jazz singer who worked in a naval yard during World War II. His maternal grandmother died of an unsuccessful at-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 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. He died from lung cancer in 1988. 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. In 1983, he completed a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Yale School of Drama.

• Illustration — Turturro at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2009 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 nine filmsmore 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 Brothershe 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 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 been nominated and won many awards from film organizations such as Screen Actors Guild, Cannes Film Festival, Golden Globes and others. Turturro produced, directed and 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. In a September 2013 interview, Turturro expressed his intention to draw parallels between sex work and acting, explaining that acting 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. Since 2022, Turturro has portrayed Irving Bailiff on the television series Severance. In spring 2025 he was filming The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, directed by Noah Segan in New York City.

Turturro's younger brother is actor Nicholas Turturro. Composer and film director Richard Termini and actress Aida Turturro are his cousins. He has two children with his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz, who moved on to a social work career in 2016. One of those two children is Arianna Turturro, a comic book artist and former actress. Turturro's older brother, Ralph, resided at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center from the early 2000s until his death in 2022. 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.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1985 — Miami Vice — David Traynor — Episode: "Rites of Passage" • 1988 — The Fortunate Pilgrim — Larry — 4 episodes • 1994 — Saturday Night Live — Himself / host — Episode: "John Turturro/Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers" • 1995 — Sugartime — Sam Giancana — Television film • 2001 — Biography — Narrator — 2 episodes • 2002 — Monday Night Mayhem — Howard Cosell — Television film • Frasier — Grant (voice) — Episode: "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" • 2004–08 — Monk — Ambrose Monk — 3 episodes • 2007 — The Bronx Is Burning — Billy Martin — 8 episodes • Flight of the Conchords — Credits Cop — Episode: "The Actor" • 2016 — The New Yorker Presents — Patient — Episode: "#1.8" • The Night Of — John Stone — 8 episodes • 2017 — Difficult People — Dusty — Episode: "Bernie and Blythe" • 2019 — The Name of the Rose — William of Baskerville — 8 episodes; also writer and executive producer • Green Eggs and Ham — Goat (voice) — 6 episodes • 2020 — The Plot Against America — Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf — 6 episodes • 2022–present — Severance — Irving Bailiff — Main role • 2024 — Mr. & Mrs. Smith — Eric Shane — Episode: "Second Date"

• Year — Title — Role — Venue — Ref. • 1983 — Danny and the Deep Blue Sea — Danny — Circle in the Square Theatre, Off-Broadway • 1998 — Waiting for Godot — Estragon — Classic Stage Company, Off-Broadway • 2003 — Life x 3 — Henry — Circle in the Square Theatre, Broadway • 2007 — A Spanish Play — Director — Classic Stage Company, Off-Broadway • 2011 — The Cherry Orchard — Yermolai Alekaseyevich Lopakhin — Classic Stage Company, Off-Broadway • 2011–12 — Relatively Speaking — Director — Brooks Atkinson Theatre, Broadway • 2013 — The Master Builder — Halvard Solness — Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn • 2015 — Zorba! — Zorba — New York City Center, Concert Staging • 2023 — Sabbath's Theater — Mickey Sabbath — Signature Theatre Company, Off-Broadway • 2026 — Rhinoceros — Bérenger — American Repertory Theater

• Year — Title — Voice role — Notes • 2007 — World War Z — Serosha Garcia Alvarez

Indexed under Art, Politics, and Modernism. Recorded as having studied at Yale School of Drama, State University of New York at New Paltz and State University of New York.