2 Quotes & Sayings By John Turturro
John Michael Turturro is an American actor, voice actor, and musician. He has starred in over thirty films, including the Academy Award nominated film "Fading Gigalo", for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He is also known for his role as Nucky Thompson in the HBO TV series "Boardwalk Empire" and its spin-off "TURN: Washington's Spies". He was born in National City, California, to Doris (née Lupino), a homemaker, and Salvatore Turturro, a construction worker and decorator. His father's family is from Palermo, Sicily
He grew up in a Roman Catholic family of eleven children in a housing project in the South Bronx. His mother is of Italian descent. As a young boy, he wanted to become a firefighter like his father but his parents talked him into joining the New York City Police Department instead.
He frequently visited his grandmother Pina Turturro who lived upstairs from his apartment on Park Avenue South in Manhattan. Turturro studied theater at The Professional Children's School at Union Theological Seminary from 1968 to 1969 before earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. In addition to acting, Turturro has worked as a jazz pianist and composer/arranger/producer. In 1974, while acting in a play by Harold Pinter called The Birthday Party at Lincoln Center, he met Spike Lee who became a friend and mentor over the next several years.
In the 1980s he became friends with director Martin Scorsese while acting in several of Scorsese's films including "Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull", "After Hours", and "New York Stories" (all written by Paul Schrader). He also appeared in two Woody Allen films: "Everyone Says I Love You" (1996) and "Celebrity" (1998).