Actor Joe Turkel (Shining, Blade Runner) died at the age of 94
Steph Deschamps / July 3, 2022
Joe Turkel, the actor known for his roles in The Shining, Blade Runner or Paths of Glory, died this Monday, June 27 in California, at the age of 94.
Actor Joe Turkel died at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, a representative confirmed to Variety.
Born in Brooklyn on July 15, 1927, Joe Turkel joined the U.S. Army at the age of 17 and served in Europe during World War II. It was after this that the young man moved to California to pursue an acting career: he got his first film role in Maxwell Shane's Suburban Seed, in 1948.
During the next four decades, Turkel has not been idle. The actor has more than 100 credits in various films and series: an exemplary career that led him to appear in films such as Bryan Forbes' A Kingpin (1965), Robert Wise's The Yangtze River Gunboat (1966), Roger Corman's The Al Capone Affair (1967), and his last feature film Parasite (1990) by D.J. Webster. He also appeared in three of director Bert I. Gordon: Tormented, Jimmy and the Pirates, two feature films released in 1960, and the 1965 science fiction comedy, Village of the Giants.
On the small screen, we could see the actor in series such as The Lone Ranger, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, The Untouchables, The Iron Man or Two Cops in Miami.
But it is especially for his roles in three of Stanley Kubrick's films that Joe Turkel became known: the first feature film of the famous director, The Ultimate Razzia (1956), then The Paths of Glory (1980) and the legendary Shining (1957) opposite Jack Nicholson, in which he embodied the often parodied role of Lloyd, the ghostly barman.
Later, he also played a leading role - the eccentric line maker Eldon Tyrell - in Ridley Scott's original 1982 Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford. His last project before retirement was to lend his voice to a video game in the franchise in 1997.
According to a representative, before his death, Joe Turkel wrote a memoir titled The Misery of Success, which his family plans to publish later this year. The iconic actor is survived by his two sons, two daughters-in-law and his brother David Turkel.