Gigolo role offers chance to blossom for Barton Fink star

"She knows I'm interested in sex," says the 57-year-old Brooklynite down the line from New York. "At first she was like, 'Well, if you've got to do it, do it.' But where it wound up I think she could appreciate."

We are talking about the reaction of his wife of three decades on learning that Turturro was helming, and taking the lead in, the tale of a down on his luck florist who takes the advice of a friend, played by Woody Allen, and becomes a male escort.

"He thought that was quite amusing," says Turturro of Allen. The two have worked together before, on the stage and in film. More than that, they share a barber. There have been various attempts to get together on screen again since Hannah and her Sisters in 1986, but until Fading Gigolo the plans went nowhere.

Although best known as an actor for his Coen brothers' films (Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, Oh Brother, Where art Thou?) and his Spike Lee movies (including Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues) and his theatre work, Turturro has down the years been making a name for himself as a film director. His 1992 debut, the family drama Mac, was a prize-winner at Cannes. Since then, the day job and family life - he and his wife have two sons - has kept his directorial CV limited, with the musical comedy Romance and Cigarettes among the highlights.

Turturro based the character of Fioravante in Fading Gigolo on "a few people that I knew". He is not, as one of his clients describes him, "a pretty boy". That, reckons Turturro, is part of the attraction.

"Most movies, when they explore sensuality or intimacy or sexuality, it is always represented by perfection. Very few people actually look that way. Sometimes the more beautiful the person, the less sensual they are. But they are so used to receiving attention. There can be something very opaque about a beautiful woman or man."

Above all, he says, Fioravante is a listener. "People blossom with that. I'm sure you have friends or people that you know that eat up all the air in the room. There's no room for the other person. He's the opposite of that."

The film is less about sex than it is about loneliness and love, and what people will do if they are in a financial pinch. On the latter, Turturro, the son of a hard-working Italian immigrant builder, has strong feelings.

"People do all kinds of things. People steal. Look at these people who have great educations and are on Wall Street. Just rob people. They don't even go to jail for it. They sell things that don't even exist. At least a hooker is exchanging something."

Besides Allen, the cast includes Sharon Stone, Liev Schrieber and Vanessa Paradis. Directing Allen was easy, says Turturro, once he got over his initial shyness.

"I wanted to see how well he knew the material, and he did. Then it was very simple, if I wanted him to go slower, more delicate, more serious, it was easy to say it. I was always very gentle with him. If you have nothing to say you shouldn't say anything."

Having Allen in a cast is always going to give a film a boost at the box office, especially in Europe where his name on a movie poster brings out the fans. But in February, after Fading Gigolo was done, dusted and waiting for release, a different kind of publicity whirlwind grew up around Allen. Allen's adopted daughter, Dylan, took to the New York Times to repeat allegations that he had abused her. Allen, in the same paper, again denied the allegations.

Turturro does not believe the row has affected the film's release, and says it is doing well in Europe and in the US. On the Times story, he says: "People made up their mind about that a long time ago. It's something that reared its head again. I don't know anything about it. He responded to it. I think people made up their minds. Either go or not go. He's been making movies the last 20 years. There's nothing I can really … I can just go forward."

Besides the Coens and Spike Lee, Turturro has worked with a number of other major directors, including Francesco Rosi on The Truce, based on Primo Levi's memoir, and Peter Weir on Fearless.

"You see each person how they approach things. In the end you take from everyone, even directors you didn't work with, things you read, watch. At the end you've got to come up with your own point of view. Your own gut instinct has to take over."

Having played the famously blocked Barton Fink, and written scripts of his own, Turturro has a healthy respect for those who work at the laptop face. "It's the hardest thing to do, certainly to write a book or a play. A screenplay is something that you know is going to be interpreted many different ways. You are not as exposed as a writer as maybe you would be on stage." He enjoys it, though, that and the editing. "That's the other part of writing. Shooting the film is like the battle, you are limited in the time you are allotted, so you have to figure out OK, this is what I can do within this amount of time."

There is another reason to remember Barton Fink fondly. It was this film, says Turturro, coming after Five Corners, Do the Right Thing and Miller's Crossing, that changed perceptions of him in the industry and meant he could avoid typecasting as the Brooklyn tough guy. "I wanted to escape that so badly."

While some actors have built entire careers around being tough guys, it is not for Turturro, who did a masters in drama at Yale. "Once you've done it, what do you want to do, sing the same song over and over again? That doesn't interest me. I wasn't trained to do the same thing over and over."

Later this year, Turturro will be seen front of camera again for God's Pocket, one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's last movies. It was full circle for Seymour Hoffman and Turturro, who auditioned the young actor for Mac.

"I remember he was too young for the role but I was very taken by him and thought he was a fantastic actor. Very sad. Saddest of all for his family, but we lost a really great actor."

Turturro also stars in Ridley Scott's biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings. He had wanted to work with the British filmmaker for a long time, and the experience of working with an old school director has not disappointed.

"He knows what he wants," laughs Turturro, one director to another.

Fading Gigolo, Cineworld Renfrew Street, Glasgow; Glasgow Film Theatre; Filmhouse, Edinburgh; and Cameo, Edinburgh, from tomorrow .