John Turturro says the overcoat he wears in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York helped him get into character: “It’s got all the pockets. It’s like a piece of armor, sort of like a samurai robe.”
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
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Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Actor John Turturro might be able to pick your pocket, but it depends on how you’re dressed.
“Horizontal pockets that are really tight with tight jeans are hard; back pockets are easier,” he says. Even better, he adds, “If your purse or your backpack is on your back and your zipper isn’t completely zipped up.”
Lifting wallets was part of his training for the new film, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. In it, Turturro stars as Harry, a skilled pickpocket who is also the primary caretaker for his wife, who’s in a catatonic state. Harry’s life takes a turn when he steals the backpack of a college-age kid who turns out to be the grandson of a crime boss.
To prepare for the role, Turturro practiced with Apollo Robbins, a famed sleight-of-hand artist, who coached him on the art of misdirection. “He really helped me, gave me exercises, and worked with me,” Turturro says. “I [practiced picking pockets] in the production office and on the set all the time.”
Harry isn’t the first morally dubious character Turturro’s played during his lengthy career in Hollywood. His film credits include Five Corners, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Do the Right Thing. In recent years, he’s been on TV in the critically acclaimed series The Night Of, The Plot Against America, and Severance.
Turturro says he’s attracted to complex roles — and he’s always willing to learn something new: “I really do try to take the elevator down into the sub-basement and mine everything I possibly can because I’m a student,” he says. “I love to begin something because you never know. There’s the unknown of, ‘I may fail. I may not be able to do that.’ And I find that exciting.”
Interview highlights
On being a legal guardian to his late brother who had schizophrenia
I had to find different residences and then I put him in an apartment. I had to hire all the aides and then someone who was in charge of the aides so I could function and he wasn’t used to being outside [the hospital]. So a lot of times he was not appreciative of that. He could be very abusive and very unpredictable, so you never knew what was going to happen. So I was always on sort of a high alert. No matter where I was in the world, I tried to protect my own family from him. And then eventually we finally got him on a medicine which he could take monthly. …
But there were times he’d be in a hospital because he acted up, he got thrown out of a lot of apartments. It was really hard to do because there’s no system. [Many] mentally ill people, they wind up on the streets. I’ve had many encounters with police, and then he wound up in the hospital of New York Presbyterian, and sometimes I’d bring him food for lunch, and if he was in a bad mood, he’d throw it all over me, and I would just have to decide: Do I leave? Do I stay? But I know he depended on me and he had a major effect on my life as a person and I did learn a lot about myself, how much I could withstand and how I learned to protect myself somewhat, because you have to be able to sort of form a little barrier around you.
He was a very complex and very perceptive person. He could be quite generous, not that he had that much to be generous with. He was a very good musician. … I guess I learned a lot about human behavior with him and all the people around him. … My brother said to me once, he said, “I’ve given you a lot of material.” And I said, “You’re really right — but at a high cost.”
On growing up around a lot of volatility
My father was in the war, so he had PTSD [from] World War II. He was in D-Day and got blown up and everything. And he was on a destroyer. It hit a mine, they were in the front, the destroyers, and they were stuck there for, like, two or three days.
So he had that, so he and my brother … it was not a great combination. And I was sort of the person who would calm things down. I’m the middle child, but I became like my mom’s protector for a lot of my life growing up. And not that I chose to do that, I just did it. I guess you have that nature or you don’t. But my mother and father were very moment-to-moment in their relationship, and I learned a lot in that house. It was like being in an acting class, but it was real-life in some ways. … My mother was very dry and funny. But you learn how to diffuse the situation. … When I was younger and I played all these explosive characters and stuff, I understood the reality of that, versus just the imaginative reality of that. I saw a lot of violence growing up and I was in the middle of it a bunch of times.
On the impact of growing up around women
I realized early on in my life that many of these households, which were tumultuous and from all different backgrounds, that it was the women who were keeping everyone together. They were the glue. And I used to want to eavesdrop on their conversations because I thought this is where it’s happening and they would exchange information about their husbands, who was doing what, who was cheating, this and that, and I found it really fascinating, you know? And I felt very comfortable, and I still feel very comfortable working with women. And I think it’s because of my mom. She was a dressmaker, and when she made dresses, I would help her with the patterns. … Sometimes when she made wedding dresses, and our dummy was too small and the lady was too tall, she would ask me, ‘Would you put it on so I can do all the hems and the beads?’ and my father came in once and I had a wedding dress on and he was looking at me and I was like, I don’t care. … It was a pretty free household that way.
Richard Edson, John Turturro and Spike Lee in Do The Right Thing, Lee’s 1989 film about simmering racial tension in a Brooklyn neighborhood.
Universal
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Universal
On growing up in a Black neighborhood and his friendship with Spike Lee
I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood for the first six years of my life in Hollis, Queens. It was in a little garden apartment. I had no white friends. My best friend was Black. The guy who was the nerdy guy was Black, the bully was Black. Everybody was different. And we had some white people on our block, but I didn’t really have any friends my age that were white. And I think that had a huge — musically, friendship-wise, sense of humor-wise — had a huge influence on me.
When I moved to Rosedale, it was more of an Italian, Irish and somewhat Jewish neighborhood. And that was the first time I felt kind of prejudiced against the color of my skin. Everyone thought I was Puerto Rican. So I found it much more aggressive personally to me, even from people who were supposed to be from a similar background to me. So my experiences growing up have sort of helped me, I think, navigate a multicultural world. …
I think that really bonded me and Spike [Lee], because he grew up in an Italian neighborhood. … I was like oh my god, this is like someone I know my whole life. … When he showed me the movie [the screenplay for Do the Right Thing] I said I know a lot of people like this and I said, I’d rather play the racist guy because that’s what it’s about, the movie. And he doesn’t have a Ku Klux Klan hood on him. He’s just the guy who sells pizza. I worked in a pizzeria before that and the guy wasn’t that different from the guy I was playing. The thing was to expose it, in a way.
On his film roles becoming more interesting as he ages (Turturro is 69)
Seventy is the new 50, I guess. Listen, I try to stay in shape and keep my memory sharp. I think as an actor, if you get the opportunity, you have a bigger toolbox of experience. You can’t jump over a fence as quickly or run as fast, but you can distill things and understand what stillness is and be really precise because your toolbox is much fuller. You’ve experienced so many things. And I feel very rich in that way right now. I do. And when I see The Only Living Pickpocket, I see a person who has lived a lot of life that way, and that’s me too.
Lauren Krenzel and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.