John Turturro was embarrassed by his role in ‘The Big Lebowski’
The Coen brothers’ 1998 comedy film The Big Lebowski is one of the most beloved comedies of all time. Perhaps the central reason is that the feature film boasts countless iconic, larger-than-life characters, from the titular Lebowski (The Dude) to John Goodman’s Walter Sobchak.
The Big Lebowski is simply dripping in genuinely memorable moments and eternally quotable pieces of dialogue. John Turturro played one fascinating character, Jesus Quintana, an opponent of The Dude, Walter and Donny’s bowling team, and he can also be found on the sex-offenders list.
Turturro himself once revealed that he was particularly embarrassed about playing the character when the film was initially released. This is incredibly strange, considering the fact that Jesus is one of the most memorable and hilarious characters in The Big Lebowski.
Jesus had, after all, been intended to be a minor character. If you were to remove his scenes from the film, there would be no impact whatsoever on the overall plot. However, despite that fact, Turturro wanted to bring something unique to the table and show his creativity.
Turturro said, via AV Club: “It was a little part, and I said, ‘Wow, what am I going to do with this?’” Turturro had also shot all of his scenes on his own – even though he is talking to The Dude and Walter, Turturro was on set without Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. “When you’re on for a little, short time, you have to really make it count,” he added.
Exercising his creative muscles, Turturro decided to over-sexualise his character and one of his best moments comes when he is unnecessarily shining his bowling ball next to his own… er… balls. He then makes the ingenious choice to actually lick the bowling ball. Turturro was truly making Jesus Quintana his own.
However, Turturro also noted that he had felt somewhat embarrassed by his portrayal. “I didn’t realise they would put it together that way,” he said. “When I saw it, I was embarrassed the first time. But it’s a character that I love. I could just … I could have a talk show as The Jesus. I could have all different people on, like Tom Brady.”
Eventually, like us all, Turturro came to love the character in which he gave one of his most unique and memorable appearances. He is said to have loved watching the film in recent years, particularly with his young son and admitted finding it “absolutely fucking hilarious”.
