The Shining & Blade Runner Actor Joe Turkel Dies at 94
Veteran character actor Joe Turkel has passed away at the age of 94, just a few weeks short of his 95th birthday. Turkel was born on July 15, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. At age 17, he joined the U.S. Army and served in Europe in WWII. After the war, he moved to California to pursue acting, which he did for 50 years, beginning his career in 1948 and officially retiring in 1998. Over those five decades, he amassed over 140 credits and was a frequent collaborator with director Stanley Kubrick. His first role was a minor one, in 1948's City Across the River, where he played Shimmy Stockton, one of a crew of juvenile delinquents being reformed by the strong-willed head of a community center.
His experience fighting in the European Theater would serve him well as he acted as a soldier in a handful of iconic war films, including 1965's POW film King Rat, 1966's The Sand Pebbles where he appeared alongside Steve McQueen, and Stanley Kubrick's 1957 WWI film Paths of Glory. He also worked with Kubrick in the heist film The Killing, the nonlinear nature of which was the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, and most notably in Kubrick's horror masterpiece The Shining. Turkel played Lloyd, the ghostly bartender and physical manifestation of Jack Torrance's (Jack Nicholson) alcoholism, often goading him to drink. He also memorably played Eldon Tyrell, the unsettling creator of the Replicants in Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi opus Blade Runner.
Related: Every Unmade Stanley Kubrick Movie (& Why They Didn't Happen)
According toVariety, Turkel passed away earlier this week, Monday June 27, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. His family broke the news of his passing, although no cause of death has been given.
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