Harvey Keitel is a movie actor best known for playing streetwise toughs, notably in films by Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Keitel grew up in Brooklyn and was in the U.S. Marines in Lebanon (1958) before becoming a member of New York's Actor's Studio. He appeared in Scorsese's first feature, Who's That Knocking At My Door (1967, also titled I Call First), and led the cast of Mean Streets (1973), a breakthrough for Keitel, Scorsese and young Robert DeNiro. Keitel then furthered his reputation as an intense portrayer of complex characters in Ridley Scott's The Duellists (1977) and James Toback's Fingers (1978). During the 1980s he made movies in Europe and stepped out of the limelight, then turned in a sturdy performance as Judas in Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). His career as a reliable character actor took off in the early '90s, with roles in Thelma & Louise (1991, with Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon), Bugsy (1991, Oscar nomination) and The Piano (1993, starring Holly Hunter). He also played Mr. White in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (a film he helped finance), Mr. Wolf in Pulp Fiction, and a twisted cop in Bad Lieutenant (1992). Despite a solid reputation as a dramatic actor, Keitel has had success at comedy as well, including 1992's Sister Act (with Whoopi Goldberg) and 1995's Smoke (with William Hurt). He began a new series on TV, Life On Mars, in the fall of 2008.
Keitel was married to actress Lorraine Bracco from 1982 until 1993.
(born May 13, 1939/41, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. film actor. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps and then studied at the Actors Studio. He made his film debut in Who's That Knocking at My Door? (1968) under Martin Scorsese, with whom he often worked thereafter. Known for his signature accent and the intensity of his performances, he played supporting or starring roles in films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Bad Timing (1980), Bugsy (1991), Thelma and Louise (1991), Reservoir Dogs (1991), The Piano (1993), and Red Dragon (2002).
"The way I see things, the way I see life, I see it as a struggle. And there's a great deal of reward I have gained coming to that understanding -- that existence is a struggle."
Born: May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Occupation: Actor
Active: '70s-2000s
Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
Career Highlights: The Piano, Reservoir Dogs, Thelma & Louise
First Major Screen Credit: Who's That Knocking at My Door? (1968)
Biography
Sporting a Brooklyn accent and bulldog features, Harvey Keitel first gained recognition with a series of gritty roles in the early films of Martin Scorsese, and he was for a long time cast as one lowlife thug after another. His career experienced a renaissance in the 1990s, when roles in such films as Thelma & Louise, Bad Lieutenant, and The Piano demonstrated his versatility and his willingness to let it all hang out (literally) in the service of an authentic characterization.
A product of Brooklyn, where he was born on May 13, 1939, Keitel grew up as something of a delinquent. At the age of 16, his truancy was put to an end when he was sent to Lebanon with the Marine Corps. Upon his return, he sold shoes and nurtured an interest in acting. He studied the craft with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler and began appearing in off-off-Broadway productions. When he was 26, fate struck in the form of a casting ad placed by Scorsese, at that time a fledgling student director at New York University; Keitel's response to the ad began a collaboration that would last for years and produce some of the more memorable moments in film history. Keitel and Scorsese made their onscreen feature debuts with Who's That Knocking at My Door? (1968), in which the former played the latter's alter ego. Five years later, they collaborated on Mean Streets; that and their subsequent collaborations of the '70s, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and Taxi Driver (1976), were some of the decade's most memorable films. Unfortunately, despite these achievements, Keitel's career suffered a great blow when he lost the lead in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now to Martin Sheen. He spent much of the '80s appearing in obscure and/or forgettable films, save for Scorsese's controversial The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and by the time he was cast in Thelma & Louise in 1991, he was in a career slump.
1991 and 1992 marked a turning point in Keitel's career: his role in Thelma and Louise as a sympathetic detective -- much like his role in that same year's Mortal Thoughts -- helped him break through the stereotypes surrounding him, and his Oscar nomination for his portrayal of gangster Mickey Cohen in Bugsy (1991) put him back in the forefront. Keitel's work in 1992's Bad Lieutenant, Reservoir Dogs, and Sister Act further established him as an actor of previously unappreciated versatility, and in 1993 he proved this versatility when he starred in Jane Campion's exotic art drama The Piano, in which he famously appeared in the nude as Holly Hunter's lover.
Keitel continued to demonstrate his ability to play both hard-boiled gangsters and rough-edged nice guys throughout the rest of the decade, turning in one solid performance after another in such films as Pulp Fiction (1994), Clockers (1995), and Copland (1997). One of his most memorable characterizations, cigar shop owner Auggie Wren, came from his collaboration with Paul Auster on Smoke and Blue in the Face (both 1995); he also worked with Auster on his 1998 romantic drama Lulu on the Bridge. In 1999, Keitel could be seen in variety of films, notably Tony Bui's Three Seasons, in which he played an American soldier searching for his lost daughter in Vietnam, and Jane Campion's Holy Smoke, in which he played a man sent to deprogram Kate Winslet of the teachings she received while part of a religious cult. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some off-Broadway productions. During this time, Keitel met struggling filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a part in Scorsese's student production, Who's That Knocking at My Door. Since then, Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on numerous projects. Keitel had the starring role in Scorsese's Mean Streets but this proved to be Robert De Niro's breakthrough film. He later appeared with De Niro in Taxi Driver, playing the role of Jodie Foster's pimp.
Originally, Keitel was to have played the role of Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now; however, he was fired early in the production and replaced by Martin Sheen. After this, it was many years before he would be able to get anything other than minor roles. At the end of the 1970s, Keitel was mostly working in European films for directors such as Ridley Scott, usually in sinister character parts.
Throughout the 1980s, Keitel continued to find plenty of work on both stage and screen, but was usually in the stereotypical role of a thug. This role reached its zenith when Keitel starred in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs in 1992, where his performance as "Mr. White" relaunched his semi-slumping career. Ridley Scott also helped Keitel by casting him as the sympathetic policeman in Thelma and Louise in 1991. That same year he landed a role in Bugsy, for which he obtained an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, then played another mobster, Deloris's gangster ex-boyfriend Vince LaRocca in Sister Act several months later. Since then, Keitel has chosen his roles with care, seeking to change his image and show off a broader acting range. One of those roles was the title character in Bad Lieutenant, about a self-loathing, drug addicted police lieutenant trying to redeem himself. His decision to co-star in Jane Campion's The Piano marks the approximate beginning of this phase of Keitel's career. He played an efficient clean-up expert Winston "The Wolf" Wolfe in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. In 1996 he landed a major role in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's film, From Dusk Till Dawn, and in 1997 he starred in the crime drama Cop Land, which also starred Sylvester Stallone, Ray Liotta, and Robert De Niro. Later roles include the fatherly Satan in Little Nicky, a wise Navy man in U-571, and diligent F.B.I. agent Sadusky in National Treasure. In 1999, Keitel was replaced by Sydney Pollack on the set of Eyes Wide Shut, due to scheduling conflicts. He has shown a willingness to help other start-up filmmakers by appearing in their first feature film. He did this not only for Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, but also Ridley Scott (The Duellists), Paul Schrader (Blue Collar), James Toback (Fingers), and Tony Bui (Three Seasons).
In 2002 at the Moscow International Film Festival Keitel was honored with the Stanislavsky Award for the outstanding achievement in the career of acting and devotion to the principles of Stanislavsky's school.
He also appeared in the Steinlager Pure commercials in New Zealand in 2007. Unlike many American male actors who either never appear nude in film or only do so once, Keitel has appeared nude in several films, including full frontal nudity in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano.
In June 2009, he made a cameo appearance in the Jay-Z video for D.O.A (Death of Auto-tune), most certainly a nod to his Brooklyn origins.
Personal life
Keitel was formerly in a long-term relationship to actress Lorraine Bracco known for playing the psychiatrist Dr Jennifer Melfi in The Sopranos. He married actress Daphna Kastner in 2001. Keitel is the father of three children: daughter Stella (born 1985) from his relationship with Bracco; son Hudson (born 2001) from his relationship with Lisa Karmazin; and son Roman (born 2003) from his marriage to Kastner. He is godfather of close friend Michael Madsen's son Max.
You Shoot Me in a Dream, You Better Wake Up and Apologize: The Films of Harvey Keitel by Glenn Salter, David Shaw and Craig Proctor (Toronto, Salter Press, 1994)
