In Stanley Kubrick’s Shining (1980), he played the imaginary bartender Lloyd, a tempting figure who hands the first glass of liquor to Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), predicting the Overlook Hotel’s decline. In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), he played the mad scientist Eldon Tyrell, creator of the “Replicants”, the half-man half-machines who give Harrison Ford’s character a hard time. Emblematic supporting role, Joe Turkel breathed his last in a hospital in Santa Monica (California) on Monday, June 27, as revealed by Variety this Saturday, July 2. With the help of his family, the 94-year-old actor had just finished writing his memoir, The Misery of Success (working title). The book was to be published in the coming months.
Born in 1927 in Brooklyn, Joe Turkel served during the Second World War, before devoting himself entirely to his passion for the seventh art. He first appeared on screen in 1948 in Maxwell Shane’s Graine de faubourg, before becoming one of Stanley Kubrick’s followers.
Before offering him a prominent place in the cast of The Shining, the legendary filmmaker cast him in L’Ultime Razzia (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957). Subsequently, Joe Turkel was hired on a hundred productions until the early 1990s: The Man with the Golden Colts, The Al Capone Affair… He then withdrew from film sets to move into the shadow of the production and write many screenplays, advocating discretion until the last moment of his life.
