Steve Buscemi
Steve Buscemi
Steven Vincent "Steve" Buscemiis an American actor and film director. Buscemi has starred and supported in successful Hollywood and indie films, including Parting Glances, New York Stories, Mystery Train, Reservoir Dogs, Desperado, Con Air, Armageddon, The Grey Zone, Ghost World, Big Fish, and The Sopranos. He is also known for his appearances in many films by the Coen brothers: Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski. Buscemi provides the voice of Randall Boggs in the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth13 December 1957
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I've always tried to have a healthy take on the characters I play; they are only characters I play.
I don't tend to think of these characters as losers. I like the struggles that people have, people who are feeling like they don't fit into society, because I still sort of feel that way.
I like character-driven stuff. It doesn't matter, the size of the part.
Casting is everything. Getting the person that you imagined is this character and then seeing what they bring to it.
Anything you write, even if you have to start over, is valuable. I let the story write itself through the characters.
I just like playing interesting, complex, complicated characters. I like films that also have an element of humor.
Character actors just pile up the credits because you work on a movie for like a few days. It's not like I'm the lead in everything I do - far from it. I'm not spending three or four months on a picture; I'm spending three or four weeks. Sometimes three or four days.
I talked with Quentin about where the character came from, and he told me Kansas City. I don't know how somebody talks from Kansas City, so I made him from New York.
I don't tend to think of the characters i play as losers. I like the struggles that people have, people who are feeling like they don't fit into society, because I still sort of feel that way.
I don't think about the characters I choose to play, analytically or consciously.
To me, score is really important. I would rather not have any score if it's something that's going to detract from the film. So often when I watch films, the score is what really bothers me.
With Animal Factory you'd think that because it's mostly interiors, you could shoot it anywhere. So we shot this in Philadelphia, and we had the cooperation of the prison system.
When I get cast, I always flip to the end of the script to see if my character gets beaten up or killed.
I don't think it's necessary to be an actor to get great performances out of an actor. But I do think it helps me as a director because I know what I like as an actor, and I try to get that to the actors who I'm working with.