Harvey Keitel was born on May 13, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York. The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Romania, he had a sister, Renee, and a brother, Jerry. He spent a restless childhood playing truant and getting into trouble before the Marine Corps took him to Lebanon when he was sixteen. Returning with a renewed sense of purpose, he became a court reporter, but his greatest desire was to act. To do this he had to overcome the stutter which had plagued his childhood, and he did so with the help of Frank Corsaro, Lee Strasberg, and Stella Adler at the Actors' Studio. He did his first acting work in off-Broadway productions and repertory, taking whatever he could get until the fateful day when he answered an advert from a young director trying to cast his student movie - a director called Martin Scorsese.
Who's That Knocking at my Door?, which co-starred Zina Bethune, may have been a minor film, but it won first prize at the 1968 Chicago Film Festival, announcing the team of Scorsese and Keitel to the wider world. They hit the big time in 1973 with Mean Streets, which also launched the career of Robert De Niro, and went on to collaborate on Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, with Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, and Diane Ladd; Taxi Driver, with Jodie Foster and Cybill Shepherd; and The Last Temptation of Christ, with Willem Defoe and Paul Greco. During this period, Keitel also worked with Ridley Scott on The Duellists, with Keith Carradine and Albert Finney, and turned in a memorable performance alongside Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett in the critically slated but popular Saturn 3.
Despite the impression he made on the industry early on, Keitel found it hard to get major roles during the 80s, and concentrated on independent film. His appearance as a sympathetic policeman in 1991's Thelma and Louise, alongside Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, helped to bring him back into the public eye and to demonstrate his versatility, though he turned in another classic performance as a villain the following year in Quentin Tarantino's seminal Reservoir Dogs. Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant gave him cult status and he followed it up with an unexpected (albeit rather unusual) romantic hero in The Piano, opposite Holly Hunter. Later he would work with Tarantino again in Pulp Fiction, with John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson; support Sylvester Stallone's award-winning performance in Cop Land; play Edward Norton's boss in Thomas Harris adaptation Red Dragon; and enjoy the good life in Brad Mirman's The Shadow Dancer. Having made over a hundred films, he shows so sign of slowing down, and has expanded his talents into production.
Keitel has been married twice: to actress Lorraine Bracco, who bore him a daughter, Stella; and to Daphna Kastner, with whom he had a son, Roman. He also has a son, Hudson, by former girlfriend Lisa Karmazin, and he has been romantically linked with Embeth Davidtz, Heather Bracken, and Toni Welsh. He lives in New York with Kastner.
YUDDY
