Background
Keitel, Harvey was born on May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn.
Keitel, Harvey was born on May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn.
Studied with Lee Strasberg, Frank Corsaro, Actors Studio.
When Keitel began in pictures, he was Martin Scorseses “made man.” He was out of the Actors’ Studio, he was brilliant, New York, and he was Jewish. Yet he had the lead in Who’s That Knocking at My Door (68, Scorsese) and he was the central figure, Charlie, in Mean Streets (73, Scorsese)—Italian, Catholic—who faces the moral dilemma of whether to carry or abandon the out- of-control Johnny Boy (De Niro). Keitel was magnificent, but even then there were moments when he had nothing to do but survey, in grief or bewilderment, the mercurial leaps and departures of De Niro’s character. As befitted Mean Streets, Keitel’s face became sadder and older. And Keitel had recommended De Niro.
He was very frightening as the faithless Ben in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (74, Scorsese); he played Bugsy Siegel on TV in The Virginia Hill Story (74, Joel Schumacher); That’s the Way of the World (75, Sig Shore); as a helpless follower of the show business in Buffalo Bill and the Indians (76, Robert Altman); and Mother. Jugs & Speed (76, Peter Yates).
In Taxi Driver (76, Scorsese), Keitel was unforgettable, long-haired, and lyrical in his foul wooing of the child prostitute. His Sport was a brilliant conception, unerringly played. People would have raved about it. but for De Niro’s Travis Biekle, a role that once Keitel could (would) have had, and that surely he has never believed was less than he deserved. De Niro was better—but maybe he wouldn’t have been better without Keitel. For Harvey provoked Bobby, punched him, the way LaMotta helped define Ray Robinson’s greatness. De Niro had to be quicker, wilder, deeper, more vulnerable—yet they share the handicap of being instinctively enclosed or cut off.
Keitel could see that he faced De Niro for the rest of his life—there might be dreams of murder in our imaginary movie. Consciously, or subconsciously, he became a touch more willful, lonely, and dangerous. He could have gone into solitary. But he got better. Within two vears of Taxi Driver Keitel had delivered what may have been his two greatest performances.
Despite all the picture postcarding for the Dordogne, The Duellists (77, Ridley Scott) any time, just for Keitel. He had a look that was superbly of the period, going from a Lermontov-like flourish to a Napoleon on St. Helena. His grim soldier was driven through all the desponds of life by one absurd, magnificent duty. When Keitel faces the woeful Carradine after years of failure, it is a joy to see age, failure, and disappointment fall away as he recognizes that lie’s “on" again.
Next year, he was the concert pianist/debt collector in Fingers (78, James Toback), as understanding of New York street idiom as he was of Toback’s psychosexual nightmare. His character shook with music, as if it were a fever. He zoomed in on women and danger with an unhindered, ecstatic self-destructiveness. Fingers is a great film, fearful and cleansing.
Those were lead parts in films that did poor or no business. Keitel’s way ahead was that of a supporting actor, and we should note his willingness to go far beyond the mainstream in his choice of parts. This is a wild, eccentric list: Welcome to L A. (77, Alan Rudolph); Blue Collar (78, Paul Schrader); Eagle's Wing (79, Anthony Harvey); Deathwatch (80, Bertrand Tavernier); Bad Timing (80, Nicolas Roeg); Saturn 3 (80, Stanley Donen); The Border (82, Tony Richardson); as Tom Paine in La Nuit de Varennes (82, Ettore Scola); as the terrorist in Exposed (83, Toback); as a sidekick to De Niro again in Falling in Love (84, Ulu Grosbard); to Italy for Un Complicate Intrigo di Donne, Vicoli e Delitti (85, Lina Wertmuller); Off Beat (86, Michael Dinner); The Men's Club (86, Peter Medak); Wise Guys (86, Brian De Palma); The Pick-Up Artist (87, Toback); The January Man (89, Pat O’Connor); as Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ (88, Scorsese), a role that could not be denied him; Two Evil Eyes (90, George Romero and Dario Argento); in what had once been the Robert Evans role in The Two Jakes (90, Jack Nicholson).
Then, step by step, he made it back into the American limelight: as very similar, decent cops in Mortal Thoughts (91, Alan Rudolph) and Thelma and Louise (91, Scott); nominated for supporting actor as at least one authentic Jewish gangster, Mickey Cohen, in Bugsy (91, Barry Levinson); naked, crucified, constantly at the end ol his tether as Bad Lieutenant (92, Abel Ferrara); Sister Act (92, Emile Ardolino); Reservoir Dogs (92, Quentin Tarantino); Point of No Return (93, John Badham); Rising Sun (93, Philip Kaufman); intuitive, half-tender, half-primitive, and naked again in The Piano (93, Jane Campion); Dangerous Game (93, Ferrara); and The Young Americans (93, Danny Cannon).
In recent vears. Keitel’s rage has diminished a little—or is it that we are wearying of him? There’s no doubting his zeal or risk-taking instincts, but charm and naturalness are still not his: Point of No Return (93, John Badham); Somebody to Love (94, Alexandre Rockwell); as Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction (94, Tarantino); Imaginary Crimes (94, Anthony Drazan); Monkey Trouble (94, Franco Amurri); Smoke (95, Wayne Wang); Ulysses Gaze (95, Theo Angelopoulos); Clockers (95, Spike Lee); Blue in the Face (95, Wang); Get Shorty (95, Barry Sonnenfeld); From Dusk Till Dawn (96, Robert Rodriguez); Head Above Water (96, Jim Wilson); City of Industry (97, John Irvin); Cop Land (97, James Mangold); as Houdini in Fairy Tale (97, Charles Sturridge); Shadrach (98,
Susanna Styron); Lulu on the Bridge (98, Paul Auster); Finding Graceland (98, David Winkler); II Mio West (98, Giovanni Veronesi); Three Seasons (99, Tony Bui); Holy Smoke (99, Campion); Presence of Mind (99, Antonio Aloy); An Interesting State (99, Wertmuller); Fail Safe (00, Stephen Frears); U-571 (00, Jonathan Mostow); Prince of Central Park (00, John Leekley); Little Nicky (00, Steve Brill); Ginostra (00, Manuel Pradal); Nailed (01, Joel Silverman); Taking Sides (01. Istvan Szabd); The Gret/ Zone (01, Tim Blake Nelson).
There are few American actors w hose careers are so intriguing—or so touching. Imagine a film about Harvey Keitel, the actor so good, so persistent, yet so regularly denied at the highest table; ceaseless in his fury, his bitterness, forever hurtling forward in that cold, determined aura that is a mix of menace and resentment. What a role! And probablv De Niro would get it.
Married Lorraine Bracco, 1982 (divorced 1983). 1 child, Stella; Married Daphna Kastner, October 7, 2001.