John Turturro
Born: 28th February 1957
Where: Brooklyn, New York
A regular player with the Coen Brothers and Spike Lee, Turturro won the best actor award at Cannes for Barton Fink.
Other notable appearances include Quiz Show with Ralph Fiennes and O Brother Where Art Thou with George Clooney.
Turturro was also nominated for best director at Cannes for Illuminata and Mac, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.
A broken leg put paid to his first choice career as a professional athlete and the time he spent recuperating he devoted to a scrap book of film stars.
He made his stage debut in a production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and following graduation went to work in his father's construction business.
Other odd jobs, including stints as a bartender, a doughnut shop worker, and a history teacher, came and went before his first big break arrived.
Robert De Niro spotted him in an off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's The Tooth of Crime and suggested the young actor pay a visit to the set of Raging Bull.
Turturro took De Niro's advice and successfully auditioned for a one-scene, one-line part.
However, discouraged by his inability to land any major roles, he was one of sixteen students accepted from nearly nine hundred for Yale's graduate drama programme.
After finishing the course he worked on stage, before appearing in Desperately Seeking Susan with Madonna and Five Corners with Jodie Foster.
Spike Lee then cast Turturro in Do the Right Thing, starting a long-standing collaboration between the two.
He also began an association with the Coen brothers, starting with Miller's Crossing, then Barton Fink, and later The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Turturro branched out as director and co-writer of Mac, a work inspired by the life of his late father.
As for directing, it took a while, but he finally unveiled his second effort, Illuminata, at Cannes in 1998.
Subsequent work includes The Luzhin Defence, the lame Schwarzenegger vehicle Collateral Damage and the limp Adam Sandler comedy Mr Deeds.
He starred as a curious widower in the surreal thriller Fear X and also appeared in the thriller Secret Window with Johnny Depp.
