Academy Award®-nominated actor Harvey Keitel first gained recognition with a series of gritty roles in Martin Scorsese's early films. The pair made their onscreen feature debuts in Who’s That Knocking at My Door, with Keitel playing Scorsese’s alter ego.

Five years later, they collaborated on Mean Streets, and a series of subsequent partnerships through the ‘70s, including Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver, which were some of the decade’s most memorable films. Keitel teamed up with Robert Altman in his Western comedy Buffalo Bill and the Indians and then took on the starring role in James Toback’s haunting psychological drama Fingers. In 1988 he was cast as Judas in Scorsese’s controversial The Last Temptation of Christ. However, his role as a sympathetic detective in Thelma & Louise proved to be a turning point in his career. His Oscar® nomination for his portrayal of gangster Mickey Cohen in Bugsy put him in the forefront on the big screen. Keitel’s work in Bad Lieutenant, earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor; Reservoir Dogs and Sister Act further established him as an actor of remarkable versatility. In 1993 the multitalented Keitel starred in Jane Campion’s critically acclaimed exotic art drama The Piano, with Holly Hunter.

Keitel continued to turn out one solid performance after another in such films as Pulp Fiction, Spike Lee’s Clockers, Theodoros Angelopoulos’ Ulysses’ Gaze, which was awarded the Cannes’ Grand Prize of the Jury; From Dusk Till Dawn directed by Robert Rodriguez and Cop Land directed by James Mangold. One of his most memorable characterizations, cigar shop owner Auggie Wren, came from his 1995 collaboration with writer Paul Auster and director Wayne Wang on Smoke, and Blue in the Face, which Auster wrote and Wang directed. In 1999, Keitel could be seen in a variety of films, notably Tony Bui’s Three Seasons and Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke, opposite Kate Winslet. He can also be seen in Franc Reyes’ The Ministers.

Keitel appeared on television, starring as John O’Neill in the 2006 miniseries The Path to 9/11, which detailed the events leading up to the U.S. terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. He took on his firstregular series television role, portraying the tough head of the homicide department, Lieutenant GeneHunt, on the drama Life on Mars.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Keitel studied acting with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. He is one of the co-presidents of The Actors’ Studio. His on-stage career has illuminated off-off Broadway, off-Broadway and famed Broadway productions such as A Lie of the Mind, written and directed by Sam Shepard, which won the 1985-86 New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play, and the 1985 Tony® Award-winning Hurlyburly, written by David Rabe and directed by Mike Nichols. In January 2008, Keitel starred as Jerry Springer in Jerry Springer - The Opera, in concert at Carnegie Hall, directed by Tony®Award nominee Jason Moore (Avenue Q) and written by Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas.