Steve Buscemi

How do you feel about the fact that one of your legacies after a decades-long acting career will be a 4-second gif in which you are wearing a backwards baseball cap and carrying a skateboard over your shoulder? —Jesse Thorn

I’m carrying two skateboards. —Steve Buscemi

Honestly, with a career like Steve Buscemi’s, he’s the kind of guy who would be endlessly proud of this kind of thing. To call it “varied” would be to miss the opportunity to say “eclectic.” Even before he was an actor, he had a wild career. Picture him dishing out ice cream to your kids and consider what you’d be wondering about that truck he was driving, is all I’m saying. We’ll get to the pre-acting job he’s proudest of in a bit, but his career is amazing and, yes, eclectic, and I’m pleased to say he seems like a decent guy, even to the extent of not correcting people when they don’t pronounce his name “bussemi” the way he does.

It’s not exactly surprising to learn that he’s an Italian guy from Brooklyn. His early efforts in show business included being an apparently not-terribly-good stand-up comedian. He bombed spectacularly at least once, leading to Paul Reiser’s being brought on in his place—something later joked about in an episode of Mad About You. He then started working in the independent film scene, notably in Parting Glances, an early movie about AIDS. He himself says he didn’t really intend to make independent movies; he made movies for people who really hoped they’d make it big.

Eventually, he succeeded. Slaves of New York may be a lesser-known James Ivory and New York Stories may include lesser-known Scorsese, but Buscemi was working for James Ivory and martin Scorsese. He started working for Jim Jarmusch and, most fatefully, the Coens. That Tarantino guy first had him rant against tipping and then play a waiter, which is probably coincidental as Tarantino is not that subtle. These were still, for the most part, films few people saw, but the right people were seeing them and Buscemi was getting steady work.

Buscemi and the Coens arguably had the same big break with Fargo. If it weren’t for “how do you do fellow kids,” it would likely be the thing he’s best known for, even though he’s the actual lead in a whole damn HBO series and has directed, produced, and of course continued acting. More observant people than I have pointed out that three of his Coen characters were killed, and you see progressively less of their body—a full body, a leg and shredded bits, ashes. He was on The Sopranos and directed multiple episodes, ditto several other shows. Including 30 Rock, in fact.

And, yes, he’d spent four years as a New York firefighter. He didn’t tell his colleagues about his acting aspirations, but they found out and were supportive, the opposite of the reaction he’d expected. The opposite of the reason he’d hidden those aspirations in the first place. By 2001, he was doing steady work—he directed a couple of episodes of Oz and was Randall in Monsters, Inc., and he performed one of the closest roles he’s ever gotten to a romantic lead in Ghost World. And then the Twin Towers fell, and he went to work again. He worked twelve-hour shifts for five days searching for remains and came away with PTSD. Funny-lookin’ he may be—his wife finds “Buscemi eyes” funnier than he does—but it’s quite clear he’s also a mensch.