Steve Buscemi Breaks Silence Following Wife Jo Andres’ Death

Steve Buscemi gave an emotional speech about his wife, the late artist Jo Andres, during an acceptance speech Thursday night in Las Vegas.

The beloved character actor was honored with the CinemaCon Big Screen Achievement Awards’ Cinema Icon Award at Caesars Palace Thursday. During his speech, he called Andres his “biggest supporter” and “biggest inspiration.”

“I do want to thank my family that’s been so supportive: my parents, my brothers, also my son, and also my wife, Jo,” Buscemi told the crowd, reports Us Weekly. “We knew each other going back. You know this business can be a challenge to relationships, but you know you stick it out and there are rewards. And I’m so grateful to her. She was my biggest supporter, and also audience, and my biggest inspiration.”

The Golden Globe winner went on to thank the colleagues who have helped him over the course of his decades-long career.

“I couldn’t do what I do without all the incredible directors, actors, writers, producers [and] studios,” the Boardwalk Empire star said. “I feel like I’m the luckiest actor on earth. All I’ve ever wanted to do was be a working actor.”

Andres died in January at 64 years old. Buscemi told the New York Times his wife died from encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis and was also treated for ovarian cancer. The couple married in 1987 and are parents to son Lucian.

Andres was a filmmaker and choreographer who moved to New York from Ohio in the early 1980s. In the early 1990s, she began making short films, editing Buscemi’s short What Happened to Pete and directing him and Lucien in the 1996 film Black Kite.

In recent years, Andres collaborated with jazz singer Diana Krall, directing a film starring Buscemi that Krall showed during her 2012 and 2013 tours.

“We had such an intuitive relationship with each other,” Krall said of Andres in an interview with the New York Times. “I said, ‘Do the film, as you’d like,’ and when I saw it, I said, ‘This is exactly what I want.’ She understood Magritte, silent movies and Stan Laurel — there are elements of all of them in it. And her choreography of Steve, and his body language, are amazing. She captured all this in a piece that had empathy, humor and darkness.”

Buscemi is one of Hollywood’s most prolific and well-known character actors. His recent films include Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, The Death of Stalin, Lean on Pete, The Ridiculous Six and The Boss Baby. He now plays God opposite Daniel Radcliffe in the new TBS series Miracle Workers, which finished its first season last month.

Buscemi will next be seen in the zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die with Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray and Selina Gomez. The movie opens on June 14.

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