Please Rewind Talent Wall

Steve Buscemi

Steve Buscemi has built a career around characters who seem slightly out of step with everyone else—and are often more interesting because of it. Born in Brooklyn on December 13, 1957, he worked as a New York City firefighter before establishing himself as a performer in the city’s downtown venues and independent film scene. His screen career has since moved easily between small, eccentric productions, large-scale action movies, comedy, television and animation. That range is all over the films featured by Please Rewind. In Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, Buscemi plays Charlie the Barber, while Miller’s Crossing began a run of appearances in films by the Coen brothers. He returned for Barton Fink, played kidnapper Carl Showalter in Fargo and became Donny in The Big Lebowski. These parts make good use of his ability to be anxious, funny and faintly dangerous without forcing any one quality to the surface. Buscemi can also turn a brief appearance into a memorable interruption. In Pulp Fiction, he is the Buddy Holly-costumed waiter serving Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace. Elsewhere in the 1990s, he appears in The Hudsucker Proxy, Billy Madison and Desperado, then brings his offbeat presence to the action spectacles Con Air and Armageddon. The Wedding Singer gives him another supporting comedy role during the same remarkably varied period. His work has never been confined to one side of the camera. Buscemi is also a screenwriter, director and producer, and he wrote, directed and starred in Trees Lounge. On television, his career includes acting in The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, as well as directing episodes of The Sopranos, Oz, Nurse Jackie and 30 Rock. For a different generation of viewers, his voice may be just as recognizable: he plays Randall Boggs in Monsters, Inc. Whether seen in a Coen brothers crime story, a blockbuster or a Pixar comedy, Buscemi brings the sense that his character has a whole peculiar life continuing beyond the edges of the frame.