“Matter of fact, the way I talked was more of a guy from the ’70s,” he said. “If you look at the old ‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’ or look at how Jerry Stiller and Walter Matthau and all those guys talked, they have a New York sound that doesn’t really exist anymore.”

“I knew guys like that from my dad’s generation,” he continued. “Salt of the earth. One of these guys who you’d underestimate.”

The same can be said about Mr. Turturro. He has long been praised for roles as varied as the racist pizza maker in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and as the paranoid game show whistle-blower in “Quiz Show.” He has appeared in several Coen brothers movies, including one he starred in, “Barton Fink.”

Despite dozens of appearances in movies, he has rarely been the signature star in major projects.

That mattered little to Mr. Zaillian, a longtime fan of Mr. Turturro’s work. Certain actors, he said, “may not be the lead, but they’re the ones you remember.”

“Take something like ‘Quiz Show,’” he said. “I remember him in that more than anybody else. ‘The Big Lebowski.’ Who can forget that part? ‘Miller’s Crossing,’ great. Even ‘Transformers.’”

And just a decade ago, Mr. Turturro said he was ready to leave acting behind.

“You have a moment in your life where you go, is there anything else I want to do?” he said. “I was telling my doctor about it and said, ‘I’d like to be a doctor.’ He said: ‘John, do you know how long you have to go to school to be a doctor? You do good stuff. What you do counts.’”