His first film appearance was 1948's City Across the River. Other film appearances include Bert I. Gordon's The Boy and the Pirates as Abu the Genie, and Tormented (both 1960); The Sand Pebbles (1966) as Bronson; The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) as Chicago gangster Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik; and the 1988 horror feature The Dark Side of the Moon.
On November 13, 1956, Turkel appeared on the ABC/Desilu western television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp as Jim Rellance, a young Texas cowhand who is infatuated with Dora Hand, a dance hall singer in Dodge City, Kansas, played by Actress Margaret Hayes. Rellance, actually an historical person, clashes with Dora's older suitor, Mayor James H. "Dog" Kelley, played by Paul Brinegar in the episode entitled "So Long, Dora, So Long". Rellance sets out to kill Kelley but instead shoots Dora to death in a cabin where Rellance believed Kelley, rather than Dora, to be sleeping.
Turkel's other television appearances include Sky King (in the 1957 episode "Mystery Horse"), Frontier Doctor, U.S. Marshal, The Asphalt Jungle, Mackenzie's Raiders, Kojak, Tales from the DarkSide, and Miami Vice (in the episode "Indian Wars"). He played the creepy janitor in the season 5 episode, "And Then There was Shawn" of Boy Meets World.
He also appeared on Bonanza three times, including the 1961 episode "The Many Faces of Gideon Flinch", playing one of two of Bullet Head Burke's right-hand men, the other played by Robert "Bobby" Jordan.
His most famous roles are Dr. Eldon Tyrell, the eccentric god-figure in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), and Lloyd, the ghostly bartender in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). He has the distinction of being one of only two actors (the other being Philip Stone) to work with Kubrick as a credited character three times: in The Killing (1956, as "Tiny"), in Paths of Glory (1957, as the doomed Private Arnaud), and in The Shining.
Turkel was born in Brooklyn, New York. When he was sixteen years old he joined the United States Army and served in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. In 1999 he lived in southern California, and wrote screenplays.
When he attended a 2014 rally in "Occupy Seattle", he referred to himself as a "Liberal Progressive Democrat".
