Turturro's first film appearance was a non-speaking extra role in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed "Raging Bull" (1980). He created the title role of John Patrick Shanley's "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea" at the Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in 1983. He repeated it the following year Off-Broadway and won an Obie Award. Turturro had a notable supporting role in William Friedkin's action film "To Live and Die in L.A." (1985), as the henchman of the villainous counterfeiter played by Willem Dafoe.