Mind your things around trained pickpocket John Turturro, says John Turturro

The actor prepared thoroughly for his latest film, The Only Living Pickpocket In New York.

By Jarrod Jones  |  October 22, 2026 | 10:42am
Photo: Sony Pictures Classics
Film News John Turturro
Mind your things around trained pickpocket John Turturro, says John Turturro

You’ll read about actors preparing for roles by going to the gym, mastering a fake language, or learning magic tricks to make their performances more convincing. (Picture an actor doing all three for a single role—a Dothraki Houdini, can you imagine?) Over the course of his celebrated career, John Turturro has prepared for his roles through study—he watched Muhammad Ali dance in the ring for The Big Lebowski, just to cite one example—though his role in Noah Segan’s The Only Living Pickpocket In New York required the 69-year-old actor to also embrace his inner felon. In a new profile in The New York Times, Turturro discussed his training with “sleight-of-hand artist” Apollo Robbins to play Harry, the film’s eponymous cutpurse.

“Apollo Robbins is like a concert pianist. I’m never going to be that,” Turturro said. “I mean, he could take my watch off, and every single time I don’t feel it. He gave me exercises with coins to do and taught me how to bump someone. I kept practicing, mostly on set.” The Barton Fink actor isn’t being coy about that “mostly on set” crack; he confesses he was tempted to try out his new talents on people he saw on trains in his native New York. “I came really close. I just wanted to feel the thrill, the nerves of what that would be.” As for his on-set prep, Turturro admitted to lifting items from fellow co-workers, sometimes successfully, other times not so much. Speaking of the malign influence of Apollo Robbins (we kid, we kid), Turturro can now join an exclusive club of actors who have been taught these light-fingered skills by the artist: He served as an advisor on the 2015 Will Smith and Margot Robbie film Focus and on the TNT series Leverage, starring Timothy Hutton. 

The Only Living Pickpocket In New York, which The A.V. Club’s Monica Castillo calls “a great little drama,” is set for a limited theatrical release on October 23 and will expand nationwide on October 30.

 
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