The actor Harvey Keitel always slaps in the face: “I’m going to smack you really hard”
Most people would be taken aback if they were to get smacked in the face by Harvey Keitel just once, but one actor would be well within their rights to run a mile every time they saw the veteran after he developed a habit of literally busting their chops whenever they came face to face. Or hand to face, to be more accurate.
Having been in the business since the 1960s, Keitel came to prominence during a period where tough guy actors maintained their reputation on and offscreen. Even though he was rarely cast in those leading roles where he kicked plenty of ass and took even more names, he always carried himself like somebody who could hold their own in a scrap.
Keitel emerged as one of Hollywood’s most versatile and dependable character actors in an era where thespians who boasted his distinct blend of rugged machismo and latent danger were more in-demand than they’d ever been, but it would appear that some old habits are difficult to shake.
Terms of endearment and shows of affection are highly malleable concepts, something poor Tony Revolori discovered to his detriment when he shared the screen with Keitel in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. Their key scene together was taxing enough, but it quickly evolved into a greeting that crossed the boundaries of the screen.
In the film, Keitel’s prison gang leader, Ludwig, slaps Revolori’s fresh-faced bellhop, Zero Moustafa, in the face, which is fair enough because it was in the script. However, the latter ended up shooting the scene dozens of times until Anderson was satisfied with the results, and he was completely unaware that it would become a key part of his personal relationship with the former.
“We had to do a scene in the movie where I smack him, and the most difficult thing to do in a movie is smack. It’s hard to make it look real,” Keitel explained to Screen Daily. “So I said to him, ‘Do you mind if I smack you?’ And he said, ‘No’. I said, ‘You can smack me as well because I’m going to smack you really hard. So I must have smacked him 25 times before we got the shot. His cheek was red.”
Revolori agreed to take a hefty slapping from Keitel, but he probably didn’t agree to what came after. The Reservoir Dogs alum confessed that “every time I see him after the movie, I smack him,” which can’t be the most pleasant thing in the world for the recent Spider-Man trilogy star to endure.
Poor Revolori will need to keep his eyes in the back of his head whenever there’s even the merest hint that he’s attending the same premiere, festival, or awards ceremony as Keitel, now that his Grand Budapest Hotel co-star has made it his mission to slap the young upstart right in the chops every time they enter each other’s orbit.
