Biography

John Michael Turturro (born February 28, 1957) is an American-Italian actor, writer and filmmaker, known for his association with the independent film movement. He has appeared in over sixty feature films and has worked frequently with the Coen brothers, Adam Sandler and Spike Lee. He began his acting career on-screen in the early 1980s, and received early critical recognition with the independent film Five Corners (1987). Turturro's mainstream breakthrough came with Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) and the Coens' Miller's Crossing (1990) and Barton Fink (1991), for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. His subsequent roles included Herb Stempel in Quiz Show (1994), Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski (1998) and The Jesus Rolls (2020), Pete Hogwallop in O Brother, Where Art Thou?