Harvey Keitel

Harvey Keitel was born in Brooklyn in 1939. Before reaching the age of majority, he enlisted in the US Navy, with which he would intervene in the conflict in Lebanon. When he left the military, he worked as a stenographer and as a clerk in a shoe store. Shortly after he enrolled in the Actor’s Studio, but not with the intention of being an interpreter, but with the aim of overcoming a dyslexia that prevented him from expressing himself clearly.

Once he discovered his vocation, and after participating in an off-Broadway play, he went to the casting of Who’s knocking on my door? (1968), the first film by Martin Scorsese , who was enchanted by Keitel’s exhibition, and would soon turn him into one of his fetish actors. Together they would work on Mean Streets , Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore , Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ , most of which were produced in the 1970s. During these years, he also had the opportunity to work with Ridley Scott –in Los Duelistas , 1977– and Paul Schrader –in Blue Collar, 1978–. But at the end of these years, his luck changed.

In 1979, after several weeks of filming the legendary Apocalypse Now , Francis Ford Coppola , with whom he apparently had “creative differences”, replaced him with Martin Sheen in the role of Captain Benjamin L. Willard. This fact depressed the actor enough, that he even thought about retiring from the profession, and since in Hollywood they did nothing but offer him mediocre roles, he decided to go to Europe to try his luck.

The old continent offered him new projects with renowned European directors, such as Ridley Scott (with whom he repeated in Thelma and Louise ) or Bertrand Tavernier ( Death Live ). But it wasn’t until the 1990s that she got the recognition he deserved from the two film industries she had worked with. Although years before he had affirmed that the awards should not be synonymous with the value of the actor – “true success implies dedication, being totally involved in something”, he commented –, in 1991 he received his first Oscar nomination with great emotion, as is logical. .. It was for his secondary role in Bugsy , biopic of the gangster who raised the city of Las Vegas. 

From this moment his career took off. Those were the years of Reservoir Dogs , The Piano , Pulp Fiction , From Dusk Till Dawn … well-known titles, which he combined with his foray into independent films, of which he is a great defender. In fact, a few years ago he founded the production company The Goatsingers, together with the actress Peggy Gormley, in order to finance projects by young filmmakers.

By the time he was already a star, he became the personification of his own neighborhood through the diptych formed by Smoke and Blue in the Face , where Wayne Wang and Paul Auster claimed “any past time was better” around the corner of a Brooklyn street.

Due to his features and his physique, we have often seen him playing the role of a tough guy, however, he has been able to show many other records, as he manifested in films such as The Look of Ulysses , by the Greek Theo Angelopoulos , where he put himself in the skin of a filmmaker who leaves Hollywood to return to his native country, through an exciting journey where the protagonist is rediscovering his past.

This drama is just one example of Keitel’s versatility that, as much as he says they’re not necessary, deserves many more accolades. He is an actor, in addition, that the public usually likes. Although on the screen he becomes the cruelest and most despotic –in Corrupt Lieutenant , for example–, he has something in his gaze that softens and eliminates all the evil in him. If an actor is capable of doing that without making enemies, then he is a great actor.