Harvey Keitel

Harvey Johannes Keitel was born on May 13, 1939, in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents Miriam (née Klein) and Harry Keitel. His mother was Romanian-born and his father Polish-born; together they operated a luncheonette, and his father also worked as a hat maker. Keitel grew up alongside an older sister, Renee, and an older brother, Jerry. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School before enlisting in the Marines at sixteen. Following his discharge, he spent a decade working as a court stenographer before pursuing an acting career.

Keitel trained under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, building his foundation through Off-Broadway work before transitioning to film. His screen career began when he auditioned for Martin Scorsese and was cast in the lead role of Scorsese's debut feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967). The two would go on to collaborate on five additional films: Mean Streets (1973), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), in which Keitel played Judas, and The Irishman (2019), where he portrayed Philadelphia crime family acting boss Angelo Bruno alongside Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.

In 1977 and 1978, Keitel appeared in the directorial debuts of three filmmakers: Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, co-starring Richard Pryor and Yaphet Kotto; Ridley Scott's The Duellists, co-starring Keith Carradine; and James Toback's Fingers. He had originally been cast as Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) and participated in the first week of principal photography in the Philippines before Coppola replaced him with Martin Sheen. Scott later cast Keitel as a sympathetic police officer in Thelma & Louise (1991), and that same year Keitel appeared in Barry Levinson's Bugsy, playing Mickey Cohen — a performance that earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Keitel's association with Quentin Tarantino began with Reservoir Dogs (1992), which he also co-produced, playing the role of Mr. White. He subsequently appeared as Winston "The Wolf" Wolf in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) and took on a major role in From Dusk till Dawn (1996), co-directed by Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. His performance in the title role of Bad Lieutenant (1992) demonstrated a broader dramatic range, and his work in Jane Campion's The Piano (1993) earned him the AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He later re-teamed with Campion on Holy Smoke! (1998), co-starring Kate Winslet.

Among his many other film credits are Cop Land (1997), co-starring Sylvester Stallone, Ray Liotta, and Robert De Niro; National Treasure (2004) and its sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), in which he played FBI Special Agent Sadusky; and Youth (2015). He collaborated with Wes Anderson on three films — Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and Isle of Dogs (2018). In 2002, he received the Stanislavsky Award at the 24th Moscow International Film Festival for outstanding achievement in acting. In 2021, the Newport Beach Film Festival honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Keitel's stage work spans the period from 1975 to 1984, during which he appeared on Broadway in Hurlyburly and Death of a Salesman. From 1995 to 2017, he served as co-president of the Actors Studio alongside Al Pacino and Ellen Burstyn. In 2008, he played Jerry Springer in the New York City premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall, and that same year took on the role of Detective Gene Hunt in ABC's television series Life on Mars, a remake of the British drama. Between 2014 and early 2020, he reprised his Pulp Fiction character Winston Wolf in a television advertising campaign for the British insurance company Direct Line.