Robert De Niro’s legendary collaborations with Martin Scorsese have made him one of the most revered actors of his generation. Starring in some of the best films of the last 30 years, De Niro is an unparalleled performer, frequently oozing an intensity and focus that has made his often unsympathetic characters among the most beloved in history, from Travis Bickle of “Taxi Driver” to Jake La Motta of “Raging Bull”.
Growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City in the 1950s, De Niro frequently found himself in trouble, particularly due to his cavorting with Little Italy hoodlums. Like many of his characters, the young De Niro was a second-generation immigrant in an era that bred cultural malaise for thousands of Italians making their way among the booming urban America. His parents, both painters, sent him to the progressive Little Red School House, and he later attended the Stella Adler Conservatory and Lee Strasberg’s famed Actor’s Studio. De Niro was never a proponent of Strasberg’s ‘method’ techniques, but nonetheless earned numerous roles through his involvement with the studio.
De Niro’s career took off in the late 60s with leading roles in several early Brian De Palma films, but it was Scorsese’s uncompromising 1973 Mafia tale “Mean Streets” that shot him to stardom. Playing opposite Harvey Keitel, De Niro arrived with force in the violent film, giving audiences an early glimpse at his unpredictable and brilliantly fitful performances. His next two films are among the greatest in Hollywood history – “The Godfather Part II” and “Taxi Driver”. The former won De Niro a Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Vito Corleone, while the latter has since become an iconic account of singularly American despair. De Niro’s performance in “Taxi Driver” is one of the most remarkable in contemporary cinema, a pitch-perfect blend of repulsion and sadness and a stunningly empathetic rendering of a suffering psychotic who is all too human.
Along with directors like Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, actors of De Niro’s stature – Jack Nicholson among them – dominated 70s Hollywood. De Niro’s next few films, which included the excessive “New York, New York”, “The Deer Hunter”, and “Raging Bull” (which won De Niro his second Oscar), are symbols of the artistic brew of the period – brilliant directors collaborating with a ‘company’ of actors, making art instead of commerce as Hollywood recovered from the financial downfall of the 60s. The 80s inevitably arrived, however, with ‘high concept’ taking over as the industry’s guiding philosophy, which subsequently put much of the previous decade’s extraordinary talent in a slump.
De Niro has nonetheless continued making extraordinary films, including “The Untouchables”, “Brazil”, “Cape Fear”, “Goodfellas”, and Michael Mann’s “Heat”, a delicious match-up between De Niro and Al Pacino. He has recently branched out to comedy, headlining the hugely successful “Meet the Parents” series alongside Ben Stiller in addition to the popular “Analyze This” series which paired him with Billy Crystal. Currently, De Niro is promoting his first directorial project since 1993’s “A Bronx Tale” – the CIA drama “The Good Shepherd”, which stars Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, and Alec Baldwin.