He starred in the HBO drama "Boardwalk Empire," which garnered him a Golden Globe Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Emmy nominations.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Buscemi began to show an interest in drama while in his last year of high school. Soon after, he moved to Manhattan to study acting with John Strasberg. There he and fellow actor/writer Mark Boone, Jr. began writing and performing their own theatre pieces in performance spaces and downtown theatres. This soon led to Steve being cast in his first lead role in Bill Sherwood's Parting Glances as a musician with AIDS.

Since this impressive breakout performance, Buscemi has become the actor of choice for some of the most respected directors in the business. His resume includes Martin Scorsese's New York Stories; Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes and Mystery Train, for which he received an IFP Spirit Award Nomination; Alexandre Rockwell's Somebody to Love, and the 1992 Sundance Film Festival Jury Award Winner In the Soup; Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, for which he received an IFP Spirit Award for his standout performance as Mr. Pink; the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, the Academy Award-winning Fargo and The Big Lebowski; Twenty Bucks; Tom DiCillo's Double Whammy, and his Sundance Film Festival award-winning Living in Oblivion, with Dermot Mulroney and Catherine Keener; Desperado; Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead; Robert Altman's Kansas City; John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. with Kurt Russell; Jerry Bruckheimer Productions' Con Air and Armageddon; Stanley Tucci's The Imposters; the HBO telefilm The Laramie Project; Love in the Time of Money; Tim Burton's Big Fish; Michael Bay's The Island; Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential; I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry with Adam Sandler; I Think I Love My Wife with Chris Rock; and numerous cameo appearances in films such as Rising Sun, The Hudsucker Proxy, Big Daddy, Pulp Fiction, and The Wedding Singer.

Buscemi's recent screen credits include Miguel Arteta's Youth in Revolt; Oren Moverman's directorial debut, The Messenger; Rampart; The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, opposite Steve Carell and Jim Carrey; Grown Ups 2, opposite Adam Sandler; Time Out of Mind; and Norman, from director Joseph Cedar.

Buscemi has provided the voices for characters in many animated features including Pixar's Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University, as the voice of Randall Boggs; Columbia Pictures' Final Fantasy and Charlotte's Web, as the voice of Templeton the Rat. He was the voice of Nebbercracker in Sony Pictures' Oscar-nominated film Monster House, executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis; and the voice of Scamper in MGM's Igor, opposite John Cusack. His other voice credits include G-Force, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer for Disney; and Columbia Pictures' Hotel Transylvania, Hotel Transylvania 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, as the voice of Wayne. He was heard opposite Alec Baldwin in the DreamWorks Animation film The Boss Baby, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2018.

In addition to his talents as an accomplished actor, Buscemi has proven to be a respected writer and director. His first project was a short film entitled "What Happened to Pete," which was featured at several film festivals including Rotterdam and Locarno, and which aired on the Bravo network.

He marked his full-length feature-film directorial debut with Trees Lounge, which he also wrote and starred in. The film, which co-starred Chloë Sevigny, Sam Jackson and Anthony LaPaglia, made its debut in the Directors' Fortnight at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Buscemi's second feature as a director, Animal Factory, told the story of a young man sent to prison for an unjustly harsh sentence who eventually becomes a product of his environment. The film, based on a book by Edward Bunker, starred Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong and premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.

IFC released his third directorial feature, Lonesome Jim, a comedy-drama about a dysfunctional family, starring Casey Affleck and Liv Tyler. It was named one of the year's top ten independent films by the National Board of Review, and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

In 2007, Sony Pictures Classics released Interview, which Buscemi also co-wrote, directed, and starred in, opposite Sienna Miller. This Theo Van Gogh remake premiered at the Sundance Film Festival that same year.

In A Good Job: Stories of the FDNY, a film by Oscar-nominated director Liz Garbus and Buscemi (a former New York City firefighter) for HBO, Buscemi explores what it's like to work in one of the most demanding fire departments in the world, where going to work means risking it all. From old New York to the post-9/11 landscape, the film reveals the immense mental and physical toll that firefighting takes on individuals, and on the community borne out of sharing an incredible responsibility.

Buscemi's directing work also includes numerous television credits, including HBO's "Homicide: Life on the Street," for which he was nominated for a DGA Award, and HBO's "The Sopranos," for which he was nominated for an Emmy and DGA Award for directing the "Pine Barrens" episode during the third season. He has directed episodes of the Emmy Award-winning show "30 Rock," Showtime's critically acclaimed drama "Nurse Jackie," starring Edie Falco, IFC's "Portlandia," as well as the Netflix series "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" and "Love."

Buscemi started a New York-based independent film and television production company in 2008 called Olive Productions, with actor/director Stanley Tucci and producer Wren Arthur. The company produces an eclectic array of TV projects as well as narrative and documentary films. Using its combined and extensive experience, the company's mandate is to tell stories with great characters, humor and compassion. Olive recently signed a multi-year overall television first-look deal with global indie Entertainment One.

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