John Turturro – Man of Many Parts

John Turturro is lionized for his portrayasls of outcasts and scoundrels. Yet, four decades into his career, the actor–and star of the Plot against America–is still hunting for fresh ways to provoke and perplex.

- By Anna Peele. Photographs by Marco Grob

JOHN TURTURRO WANTS to know why I married my husband. The 62-year-old actor and filmmaker is sitting across from me at Bar Pitti, an Italian spot in New York’s West Village that he has patronized for three decades, dipping bread in olive oil. Thrown off the intimacy of his question, I blurt something about how I like the way my husband smells. Turturro breathes in deeply, as if remembering body odors past. “I’ve thought about armpits for a long time,” he says. The scent of sweat glands, he adds, is “very underrated.”

As Turturro zips up his black Patagonia fleece, he recalls one of his favorite scenes from the 1999 film Holy Smoke!, in which Kate Winslet smells her own underarm as she dances. “But she did it very unconsciously,” he explains. The pit sniffis why Turturro decided to cast the actress in 2005’s Romance & Cigarettes, one of the first films that he directed. “She was like an animal,” he says, growling.

Turturro keeps the questions coming; during our time together, he asks more about me than any actor I’ve interviewed. He wonders whether I believe Hillary Clinton would’ve been elected president had she divorced Bill. (Yes.) He solicits my opinion on Robert Pattinson’s performance in The Lighthouse. (Certainly the most acting I saw last year.) These queries do not feel compulsory (see: Why did you marry your husband?), or like occasions to introduce his own thoughts on a topic. Turturro speaks with, rather than at, you.