John Turturro was born on February 28, 1957 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the middle son of Katherine Florence and Nicholas Turturro. His mother was born in the U.S. to parents with roots in Aragona, Sicily, Italy, and was an amateur jazz singer who had worked in a naval yard during World War II. His maternal grandmother died of an unsuccessful at-home abortion when his mother was six, leaving his mother in an orphanage, as his grandfather was unable to provide for the children on his own. His father had emigrated at age six from Giovinazzo, Italy to the United States, and later worked as a carpenter and construction worker before joining the U.S. Navy. He died from lung cancer in 1988.
Turturro was raised as a Catholic and moved to the Rosedale section of Queens, New York, with his family when he was 6. He graduated from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts in theater studies. He later did graduate study at the Yale School of Drama, receiving a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1983.
