Harvey Keitel

Harvey Keitel (born May 13, 1939) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor. He plays Lt. Gene Hunt on the American version of Life on Mars.

Biography

Early life

Keitel was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the son of Miriam and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland. His parents owned and ran a luncheonette and his father also worked as a hatmaker.

Keitel grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn with his sister, Renee, and brother, Jerry. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School (New York). At the age of sixteen, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps, a decision that took him to Lebanon. After his return to the United States, he was a court reporter and was able to support himself before beginning his acting career.

Career

Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, 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 a 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. 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 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 Wolf 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).

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 January 2008, Keitel played Jerry Springer in the New York City premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall. It was announced in July 2008 that Keitel had been cast in the role of Detective Gene Hunt in ABC's new series Life on Mars.

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.

Personal life

Keitel was formerly in a long-term relationship to actress Lorraine Bracco. 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.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1967	Who's That Knocking at My Door	J.R.
	Reflections in a Golden Eye	Soldier	Uncredited
1973	Mean Streets	Charlie
1974	A Memory of Two Mondays (TV)	Jerry
	Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore	Ben
1975	That's the Way of the World	Coleman Buckmaster
1976	Taxi Driver	'Sport' Matthew
	Mother, Jugs & Speed	Tony Malatesta
1978	Blue Collar	Jerry Bartowski
	The Duellists	Feraud
	Fingers	Jimmy Fingers
1980	Bad Timing	Inspector Netusil
	The Border	Cat
	Saturn 3	Benson
	Deathwatch	Roddy
1981	Copkiller	Lt. Fred O'Connor
1982	That Night in Varennes	Thomas Paine
1983	Exposed	Rivas
1986	Blindside	Penfield Gruber
	Wise Guys	Bobby DiLea
1987	The Pick-up Artist	Alonzo Scolara
1988	Down Where The Buffalo Go	(TV)
	The Last Temptation of Christ	Judas Iscariot
1989	The January Man	Police Commissioner Frank Starkey
1990	The Two Jakes	Julius 'Jake' Berman
1991	Thelma and Louise	Hal
	Mortal Thoughts	Det. John Woods
	Bugsy	Mickey Cohen	Nominated: Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
1992	Bad Lieutenant	The Lieutenant	Won: Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor
	Reservoir Dogs	Mr. White - Larry Dimmick	Also co-producer
	Sister Act	Vince LaRocca
1993	Rising Sun	Lt. Tom Graham
	Dangerous Game	Eddie Israel
	Point of no Return	Victor the Cleaner
	The Piano	George Baines	Won: Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
	Young Americans	John Harris
1994	Imaginary Crimes	Ray Weiler
	Pulp Fiction	Winston 'The Wolf' Wolfe
	Monkey Trouble	Azro
1995	Get Shorty	Himself	Uncredited
	Smoke	Augustus 'Auggie' Wren
	Ulysses' Gaze	A
	Blue in the Face	Auggie Wren	Also executive producer
	Clockers	Det. Rocco Klein
1996	From Dusk Till Dawn	Jacob Fuller	Nominated: Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor
	Head Above Water	George
1997	FairyTale: A True Story	Harry Houdini
	Cop Land	Ray Donlan
	City of Industry	Roy Egan
1998	Finding Graceland	Elvis
	Gunslinger's Revenge	Johnny Lowen
	Shadrach	Vernon
	Lulu on the Bridge	Izzy Maurer
1999	Three Seasons	James Hager	Also executive producer
	Holy Smoke!	PJ Waters
	Presence of Mind	The Master
2000	Prince of Central Park	The Guardian
	U-571	CPO Henry Klough
	Little Nicky	The Devil (Nicky's Dad)
2001	The Grey Zone	SS-Oberscharführer Eric Muhsfeldt	Also executive producer
	Taking Sides	Major Steve Arnold
2002	Red Dragon	Jack Crawford
	Ginostra	Matt Benson
2003	Crime Spree	Frankie Zammeti
	Dreaming of Julia	Che	Also producer
	The Galindez File	Edward Robards
2004	National Treasure	Sadusky
	The Bridge of San Luis Rey	Uncle Pio
	Puerto Vallarta Squeeze	Walter McGrane
2005	Be Cool	Nick Carr
	A Crime	Roger Culkin
	The Shadow Dancer	Weldon Parish
2006	The Path to 9/11	John O'Neill
	Arthur and the Minimoys	Miro	Voice
	The Stone Merchant	The Merchant Ludovico Vicedomini
2007	One Last Dance	Terrtano
	My Sexiest Year	Zowie
	National Treasure: Book of Secrets	Sadusky
2008	The Ministers

Further reading

• 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)

External links

• Harvey Keitel profile on Rotten Tomatoes