Biography
Abel Ferrara is an American film director, screenwriter and actor. Born in the Bronx, New York, on 19 July 1951, he began making Super 8 films as a teenager and studied at Rockland Community College and SUNY Purchase. His feature debut was the low-budget horror The Driller Killer (1979), in which he also appeared under the pseudonym Jimmy Laine.
Ferrara is known for independent New York-set crime films such as Ms .45 (1981), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Funeral (1996). He has directed episodes of the television series Miami Vice (1984) and worked extensively in Europe since the early 2000s. In 2025 he played Ezra Mishkin in Marty Supreme.
