An actor, writer and director, John Turturro has just about done it all. But in the end, it all comes back to the basics: telling a good story.

He is Pino, the bigoted pizza guy who does the wrong thing in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

He is Bernie Bernbaum, the double-crossing con man in Miller’s Crossing, and the eponymous Barton Fink, an idealistic writer whose creative block transports him into a nightmarish dream world in 1940s Hollywood.

He is the hairnet-wearing bowler Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski and bad tempered Pete in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, who gets turned into a “horny toad” by the beautiful “syreens.”

He is everyman or, more to the point, any man. Good guy, bad guy—whatever works.

He is the archetypal character actor, one whose ability to express life’s intricacies has the power to define a production.

And he is a risk-taking writer and director, whose own movies—Mac, Illuminata and Romance & Cigarettes—bespeak a passion and vision all his own.

Star Turns and Scene Stealers: Turturro’s diverse roles in some of the best films of the past few decades has left an indelible mark on the cinema. Check out a half dozen of his best roles in our interactive graphic.

As an actor, director and writer, Turturro’s stage, television and film credits (over 60 and counting) stretch from comedies and dramas to action films and musicals. He has appeared in everything from Raging Bull and Hannah and Her Sisters to TV’s “Monk” and a stage production of Beckett’s Endgame. At only 51 years of age, his experiences could already constitute a couple of creative careers.

But who does Turturro think he is? Simply put, a storyteller. He describes where he is in his career: “I feel a draw back to a basic kind of storytelling, because I feel it’s closer to reading a book, which I really feel is a superior form of entertainment. It’s you and the writer, and you’re left to your own imagination.”

Which is why one of his next acts will be adapting Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales for the stage.

These are stories that the Italian author assembled from his country’s fading oral storytelling tradition. In them, ogres pose as kind grandmothers and princesses spring from apples. Kings, peasants, knights, ladies and fools—the whole cast of mythical characters crash into each other until greed and cruelty fail, and generosity and virtue triumph.

Turturro’s wife, actress Kathy Borowitz, was enamoured with Folktales, and eventually won the rights from Calvino’s widow. Turturro says a copy of the the book was “the first gift [Borowitz] ever gave me.” Today, the two are collaborating to bring these ancient stories to modern audiences, starting with a production in Turin, Italy.

Turturro says folktales function like religion, offering a sense of self to people who might have little else. They provide morals to live by and—once all the plot twists and turns are resolved—justice for the good and punishment for those who are evil.

But those morals need to be embedded in fanciful, intriguing stories. And fantasy must be based in reality, Turturro maintains, otherwise the audience won’t connect: “great writers have a sensibility, a view of the world that helps make sense of life as you go along.”

Turturro hopes that Calvino’s Folktales will resonate with today’s audiences, because man’s essential nature never changes much. It’s this archetypal foundation that makes stories first told hundreds of years ago still resonate today.

However, Turturro believes that contemporary computer technology has provided audiences with fantasies that are completely disconnected from reality. He is troubled by that disconnect, since in ancient times, folktales linked people to their collective histories and gave them a sense of self.

Today, he argues, those connections need to be made by authors, playwrights, actors and directors creating stories for print, the stage and the small and big screens.

That’s where the art of storytelling comes in. Its role is to help audiences use their imaginations to discover new meanings in their individual lives.

“I don’t really go to church.” Turturro explains. “So if I do a piece of theater, for example, it’s the same correlation between the audience and the stage. You have this kind of direct communication, without a lot of effects.”

“There’s something kind of basic about that.”

Hear Turturro read “The False Grandmother” from Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, wonderfully illustrated by Kevin Ruelle exclusively for FLYP.Watch our interview with Turturro, in which he talks about turning these folktales into a theatrical production.