Throughout the nearly three decades of his screen acting career, John Turturro has repeatedly surprised and impressed audiences with his formidable versatility in an extraordinary diversity of roles.

Indeed, to fully appreciate his range, one need only consider the variety of characters he has portrayed while working with filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen: The increasingly paranoid bookish intellectual of Barton Fink, the swaggering bowling-alley poseur of The Big Lebowski, the slow-witted Southern chain-gang escapee of O Brother, Where Art Thou? — and, most poignantly, the crafty yet cowardly criminal who asks one favor too many of an unforgiving Gabriel Byrne in Miller’s Crossing.

On the other side of the camera, Turturro’s sporadic work as feature film director has been equally ambitious — yet arguably more autobiographical.

Beginning with Mac, his splendidly acted and deeply felt 1992 drama inspired by the post-WWII experiences of his working-class father, and continuing with Passione, which will be shown at 7 p.m. tonight at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as an opening-night offering of the Cinema Arts Festival, Turturro has drawn from his life, his heritage and, yes, his passions to craft an unique brand of what Francois Truffaut once described as “first-person cinema.”

And although he is not the director of Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy — which the Cinema Arts Festival will present at 4 p.m. Thursday at MFAH — that film, too, which he co-wrote with director and noted puppeteer Roman Paska, is a personal project: Turturro takes the audience along for an intimate tour of Sicily, his mother’s ancestral homeland, while he researches a prospective film to be set in the world of the island’s famed puppet theater.

Passione allows Turturro to examine and embrace another facet of his European heritage while taking audiences on a musical adventure in Naples, which he describes as “the jukebox of the world.” Combining archival footage of legendary singers and musicians with recent performances by renowned recording artists, the film celebrates a rich cultural heritage while aiming to do for Neapolitan music what Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club did for Cuban music. Past masters such as Sergio Bruni, Massimo Ranieri and Renata Carasonni share screen time with contemporary artists like M’Barka Ben Taleb and James Senese.

“I think we have a great, great cast in this movie,” Turturro says. “They are not only great singers — they are great storytellers.”

Turturro will be on hand to introduce tonight's Cinema Arts Festival premiere of Passione, and will return (along with director Roman Paska) for Thursday’s festival screening of Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy.

Expect him to be passionate in his comments.