Harvey Keitel got his start in movies as a result of his work with director MARTIN SCORSESE, who used him in most of his major films: Mean Streets (1973), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), for example.
Later, Harvey Keitel became one of the first Hollywood actors to lend his talents to young independent directors, a direct result of which was QUENTIN TARANTINO's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). In the course of his career, he has moved from playing tough, street-smart hoodlums and misogynists to caring, sympathetic men who relate well to women.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to lower-middle-class orthodox Jewish parents, Harvey Keitel flunked out of school at 17 and enlisted in the Marines. After three years in the marines, he returned to Brooklyn in 1965 and worked for eight years as a courtroom stenographer while taking classes at Stella Adler's School of Acting.
At this juncture, he also met director Martin Scorsese, who cast him in Who's That Knocking at My Door? (1968), based upon Scorsese's experiences as a young man growing up in Little Italy. Some five years later, he was reunited with Scorsese for Mean Streets (1973), the director's breakthrough picture. Although Harvey Keitel played one of the two central figures, ROBERT DE NIRO stole the film and went immediately to stardom, while Harvey Keitel's career stalled.
In Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, one of the first feminist films, Scorsese cast him in a role calling for him to terrify his wife (Ellen Burstyn). Seventeen years later, in Thelma and Louise (1991), Harvey Keitel's role was much more sympathetic and compassionate as a detective. That compassion reappeared in the award-winning The Piano (1993), in which he played George, a colonial New Zealand landowner, opposite Holly Hunter as Ada, a mute Scots widow with a young daughter, who was married to an insensitive and cruel husband.
In the course of a productive film career, Harvey Keitel has worked with some of the best actors (such as JACK NICHOLSON and De Niro) and a number of mainstream directors besides Scorsese, Tarantino, and Jane Campion: Nicolas Roeg (Bad Timing, 1980), Tony Richardson (The Border, 1982), BARRY LEVINSON (Bugsy, 1991), Phil Kaufman (Rising Sun, 1993), Wayne Wang (Smoke and Blue in the Face, both 1995), ROBERT ALTMAN (Buffalo Bill and the Indians, 1976), Ridley Scott (The Duellists, 1977), PAUL SCHRADER (Blue Collar, 1978), and Spike Lee (Clockers, 1995).
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