STUTTERING F OUNDATION CELEBRITY CORNER HAR VEY KEITEL


Harvey Keitel isn’t among the most well-known actors who have had issues with stuttering, yet he has never shied away from revealing what a factor stuttering has been throughout his life.


Harvey Keitel was born in Brooklyn on May 13, 1939, and spent his formative years in that borough’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. His parents were Jewish immigrants, his mother from Romania and his father from Poland. He was the youngest in his family, having an older sister Renee and an older brother Jerry. His parents owned and operated a neighborhood luncheonette, while his father also worked in a hat factory.


Growing up in a strict Orthodox Jewish household, his teenage years presented a problem for him as it was the era of Marlon Brando, James Dean and Elvis Presley. Following his bar mitzvah, he began to reject his Jewish faith and dress like kids who would be perceived as “juvenile delinquents” with the “duck’s ass” hairstyle, the leather jacket, and the peg pants set off by pointy shoes with metal cleats that could announce his arrival from a block away.


Keitel knew that he was not the only kid from Brooklyn who argued with his parents about dressing like a hood. However, his masquerade as a would-be hoodlum came to an abrupt end when he left high school without graduating and at age 17 joined the U.S. Marines where he served as an infantry rifleman from 1956-1959. He was deployed to Lebanon in 1958 during the U.S. intervention known as Operation Blue Bat, which aimed to stabilize the country during political unrest.


Upon his discharge from the Marines, Keitel began a ten- year career as a court stenographer in New York City. It was during this time that he began acting classes on a whim in 1964. The rest is history.


He would study under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, as well as at the HB Studio. Around this time, he was cast in his first movie role, as the star of Martin Scorcese’s first feature film Who’s That Knocking on My Door in 1967, beginning the first of many collaborations with Scorcese. In 1973, he starred in Scorcese’s highly acclaimed film Mean Streets. In 1974 and 1976 he would team up with Scorcese again in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver, respectively.


Harvey Keitel is an American actor known for his intense performances and major influence on both independent and mainstream films. He gained recognition through collaborations with Martin Scorsese in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, and later starred in acclaimed movies like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. Over his long career, he has built a reputation for playing complex, gritty characters and helping shape modern cinema.


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PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images


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