Ranking Harvey Keitel’s 10 best performances of all time
There’s a cohort of actors who just radiate the style and authenticity of cinema in the late 20th century. We’re talking about the likes of Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta, Harvey Keitel and pretty much anyone else who worked with Quentin Tarantino, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese before the end of the previous millennium.
Where many of the aforementioned actors have received heaps of praise over the decades, Keitel has always been someone who has unfairly drifted beneath the radar, with some of his finest acting roles being forgotten by mainstream audiences. Boasting a number of high-profile collaborations with the likes of Tarantino, Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jane Campion, Robert Rodriguez and Abel Ferrara, Keitel has enjoyed an illustrious career.
The actor hasn’t slowed down in contemporary cinema either, taking on challenging roles in films from the likes of Wes Anderson, Paolo Sorrentino and Taylor Hackford. He has since quietly become an Anderson regular, joining the likes of Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman in such films as Moonrise Kingdom, Isle of Dogs and the classic modern comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Take a look at our list of Keitel’s top ten greatest performances of all time below, where we highlight the best of his celebrated career.
Harvey Keitel’s 10 best performances of all time
10. From Dusk Till Dawn (Robert Rodriguez, 1996)
Released in 1996, From Dusk Till Dawn follows Seth Gecko and his dangerously unpredictable brother Richard as they dash the Mexican border to escape arrest after killing several police officers during a bank robbery. On the way, they kidnap Jacob Fuller and his children, played by Harvey Keitel. After forcing Fuller to drive them across the border, Seth and Richard haul up in a topless bar which turns out to be riddled with vampires.
A “faithless preacher” with a knack for killing “satanic cocksuckers”, Jacob Fuller is Harvey Keitel at his most badass. Quiet and unsure of himself on the outside, deep down, Fuller is a bruising hero, slaying scores of vampires before being bitten himself and killed by his son Scott. Nobody but Keitel would have been able to find such a perfect balance between septuagenarian curmudgeonliness and primal violence.
9. Clockers (Spike Lee, 1995)
Harvey Keitel and Spike Lee aren’t two cinematic icons you’d immediately put together, but their collaboration in 1995’s Clockers is highly underrated. Based on the novel of the same name by Richard Price, the story follows drug pushers in the projects of Brooklyn who are bound by the limits of their social environment, pressured by the drug bosses demanding their work and the detectives trying to pursue them.
Keitel stars as police officer Rocco Klein who helps try and get Strike (Mekhi Phifer) out of the drug-pushing game, with the actor giving a fantastic performance alongside the likes of John Turturro and Keith David.
8. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
Matthew ‘Sport’ Higgins is quite unlike any character Harvey Keitel has played before or since. He appears opposite Robert DeNiro in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 masterpiece Taxi Driver, in which a New York cabbie slowly slides into madness after becoming disgusted by the crime-infested streets of the Big Apple. Things only get more intense when he meets Iris, a child prostitute working those same streets.
Keitel’s role was originally written for a Black actor, but Columbia Pictures raised concerns that the pimp character’s race might lead to some problems later down the line. As writer Paul Schrader once recalled, “I had written the character of the pimp as black, and we were told by Columbia we had to change it to a white guy because the lawyers were concerned, ‘if we do this and Travis kills all those black people at the end, then we’re going to have a riot.’” The character was revised and Harvey won the role, one of the most disturbing of his entire career.
7. Fingers (James Toback, 1978)
Too rarely discussed in Keitel’s filmography is the 1978 movie Fingers, which tells the story of a dysfunctional young man whose loyalties are split between his mother, who’s a concert pianist, and his father, who has connections to the mob. Written and directed by James Toback, who would later go on to helm the 2008 documentary about the boxer Mike Tyson, the film is a forgotten gem of 1970s filmmaking.
Commanding the film from the front line, Keitel gives a dedicated performance and helps give several layers to his complex character, elevating Toback’s directorial debut to be a highly memorable crime drama.
6. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
Undoubtedly Harvey Keitel’s most iconic role, the actor plays Winston Wolf in Quentin Tarantino’s second feature, Pulp Fiction. Known to most as ‘The Wolf’, Winston is a member of an organised crime cartel run by Marsellus Wallace. A master fixer, he’s responsible for cleaning up the evidence left behind by Wallace’s hitmen Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield. In fact, when Vince accidentally kills Marvin, one of their own, it’s ‘The Wolf’ Marsellus calls to take care of the situation.
Keitel’s genius is in his ability to highlight ‘The Wolf’s impeccable manners while suggesting that this is not a man to be messed with. He is both incredibly polite and strangely terrifying. Somewhere between a butler, a plumber and a cold-hearted killer, Wolf is just so damn watchable.
5. The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)
The New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion is another filmmaker you wouldn’t necessarily associate with Harvey Keitel, yet the actor delivered one of his finest performances in her 1993 movie The Piano. The three-time Oscar-winning film and ‘Best Picture’ nominee stars the American actor as George Baines, a sailor who has integrated with the Maori culture and who takes ownership of the titular instrument.
Far different from his usual tough-guy performances, Keitel accesses his softer side in The Piano, giving a tender performance that stands out in his filmography and demonstrates his true range as a Hollywood star.
4. Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)
Martin Scorsese’s document of life on the – ahem – mean streets of Little Italy, this 1993 gem follows Charlie Cappa and his attempts to save himself and his reckless friend Johnny from the debt that threatens to doom them to a life of danger and insecurity.
The honourable foil to Robert De Niro’s chaotic Johnny, Charlie Cappa – played by Keitel – seems so on top of things. In almost every scene, he starts out in control of the situation and yet somehow manages to make a mess of things every single time. Often, it’s the fault of his irredeemable friend, Johnny, for whom he has decided to offer himself up as a sacrifice. Tender and nuanced, Keitel’s performance is the beating heart of Mean Streets.
3. Smoke (Wayne Wang, 1995)
From one of Keitel’s most iconic performances to one of his most underrated. In Wayne Wang’s 1995 film Smoke, the actor plays Auggie Wren, a man who is in charge of a tobacco shop in one of Brooklyn’s most popular neighbourhoods. As well as a shopkeeper, Wren is also a keen photographer, with Keitel embodying a more gentle character than the criminals he’s been typecast as throughout his filmography.
Certainly one of the actor’s most likeable characters, Wren is a humble and kind soul, which is often a more challenging role to take on than embodying a nasty career criminal who snarls with melodramatic menace.
2. Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
For Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature, Harvey Keitel was cast as Mr White, one of six criminals hired to carry out a high-stakes robbery that goes terribly wrong. When the heist is ambushed, Mr White and the others engage in a gun battle with police, with Mr White nailing a few while Mr Blonde goes on a violent rampage. When they all return to the warehouse to take stock, they realise that one of the six must have blabbed.
Keitel’s Mr White is perhaps the most psychologically fascinating of the six characters, largely because he reveals so little. Unlike Mr Blonde, he seems to regard violence as a necessary evil – something that divides the “psychopaths” from the real professionals. That’s Mr White all over: he’s old school.
1. Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992)
The idiosyncratic American filmmaker Abel Ferrara is undoubtedly one of the most underrated directors of the late 20th century, having helmed 1990’s King of New York and the iconic 1992 crime flick Bad Lieutenant. The unhinged movie tells the story of a very corrupt police detective investigating the rape of a nun, who, during the course of his work, tries to find forgiveness himself.
Perfectly embodying the unnamed protagonist, Keitel gives the performance of a lifetime as the fragile police officer, perfectly swinging from being an affable man of the law to a deranged criminal. The film was later remade by Werner Herzog, with Nicholas Cage replacing Keitel in the lead role, still, as great as Cage was, he was never able to match the careful nuance of the original actor.
