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Robert De Niro is, without any doubt, one of the greatest American actors to ever grace the screen. He came to prominence as part of that wonderful generation of male performers during the Hollywood New Wave which included the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino.
De Niro is partly responsible – through his groundbreaking work in films such as Raging Bull and The Godfather Part 2 – for a number of American cinema’s most-loved and critically-acclaimed movies, particularly of the 1970s and 1980s.
That he has continued to deliver compelling performances throughout his career is a mark of his talent as well as his range. He’s dabbled with horror (Frankenstein in 1994 and Red Lights in 2012), played the villain (The Fan, Cape Fear, This Boy’s Life), and even tried romance (1984’s Falling in Love opposite Meryl Streep).
Younger audiences will be far more familiar with him in comedic roles, for instance, in Meet the Parents and Last Vegas. But he hasn’t lost that “gangster” inside him, a character type that set his career in motion, and one that he returned to in 2019 with The Irishman.
What’s Robert De Niro’s best film?
What is Robert De Niro’s best film? Pictured: Casino (1995)
Robert De Niro’s best movies often see him portraying characters operating outside the law. He’s found a particular niche as a sort of anti-hero. But, indicative of his talent, these compelling villains whose journeys we get behind are never the same.
For example, his roles in The King of Comedy, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull couldn’t be more different despite all being under the direction of Martin Scorsese.
Yet each character’s actions, though at times reprehensible and law-breaking, leave us warming to their plight. Is there any better example than De Niro’s master thief Neil McCauley in Heat? It’s a trait he has mastered and it’s part of what makes his work so special.
10 essential Robert De Niro movies, ranked
10. This Boy’s Life
Dir. Caton-Jones (1993)
This Boy’s Life stars a young Leonardo DiCaprio alongside De Niro in a story based on the true-life tale of writer Tobias Wolff. It follows Toby (DiCaprio) and his mother as she begins a relationship with De Niro’s Dwight Hansen.
The seemingly respectable family man appears to welcome the pair into his home, but Toby soon learns of his abusive ways when his mother is not around. Unable to prevent the marriage from taking place, Toby’s mother soon comes to realise Dwight is not the man she believed him to be.
The film features a powerful performance from De Niro as a domineering and abusive patriarch whose tyrannical maturity is in stark contrast to DiCaprio’s youthful idealism.
9. Mean Streets
Dir. Scorsese (1973)
The film that announced to the world the talents of both De Niro and Martin Scorsese, Mean Streets features a feisty, angry young man role for the aforementioned actor.
Here he plays Johnny Boy, an Italian-American living in New York, who delights in causing problems for his friend Charlie (Harvey Keitel), a local criminal trying to move up the mafia food chain.
De Niro is at his manic best, tilting on the edge of insanity with an air of joviality and an odd sense of humour.
8. Midnight Run
Dir. Brest (1988)
De Niro does comedy without resorting to parodying his bad-boy image. That’s partly why Martin Brest’s Midnight Run is so good. De Niro is super-cool as bounty hunter Jack Walsh who takes on the task of tracking down Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas (Charles Grodin), an accountant who embezzled $15 million from Las Vegas gangster Jimmy Serano (Dennis Farina).
Grodin is also excellent as the nerdy moneyman playing against De Niro’s macho hero. De Niro finds himself up against not only rival Marvin Dofler (John Ashton) and the FBI, but Serrano’s gang who are out to kill Mardukas before Walsh can bring him in. Midnight Run is a fun crime caper that sees De Niro playing for laughs.
7. The Godfather: Part II
Dir. Coppola (1974)
De Niro had big shoes to fill when taking on the role of Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II. De Niro portrays Vito as a young hoodlum committed to finding a better life for himself and his family.
He begins to rise up the ranks within New York’s criminal underworld. Whereas Brando was decrepit and aging, De Niro as the young Corleone, is fuelled on raw energy.
A testament to Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo’s writing of the character is how they present the physical prowess, leadership qualities and fearlessness of the young mafia family patriarch without the guile and patience of his older self.
There’s never a moment you question whether or not you’re watching Vito in his younger years despite Brando and De Niro looking nothing like each other. That’s the genius of the writing and the actor’s performance coming through.
6. Goodfellas
Dir. Scorsese (1990)
Martin Scorsese’s much-loved Goodfellas sees De Niro share screen time with Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta. Pesci has the scene-stealing moments but De Niro is no less than brilliant as the suave gangster Jimmy “The Gent” Conway.
Charting the lives of a trio of gangsters across three decades, Goodfellas begins with Henry Hill (Liotta), a young hoodlum in New York who wants to become a member of the local mafia. He begins running errands for the Lucchese crime family and eventually begins working for crime boss Paulie (Paul Sorvino).
There he meets De Niro’s Jimmy Conway, an experienced con artist, and Pesci’s Tommy DeVito, an angry live-wire with a short temper. Scorsese looks at the three men’s rise and ultimate fall. De Niro once again proves he saves his best performances for the aforementioned director.
5. The Deer Hunter
Dir. Cimino (1978)
One of the most renowned Vietnam war movies, partly because it was the first major American film to look subjectively at the conflict, Michael Cimino’s film depicts elements of the war as well as its impact after wards on those that fought and survived the ordeal.
Focusing on three American steel workers, The Deer Hunter depicts how governmental pressure on traditional patriotic values impinges and destroys the common values of ordinary American men. De Niro delivers another masterful performance with the infamous Russian Roulette scene being an obvious stand out scene.
4. Raging Bull
Dir. Scorsese (1980)
Never has De Niro’s method acting being more obvious than in his role as Jake La Motta in Scorsese’s Raging Bull. The actor’s weight and physique changes throughout the film as De Niro embodies the sports success of La Motta in the boxing ring and the damaging excess away from it.
Based on the true-life story of the middleweight boxer, Raging Bull tells of the anger and destructive ways that aided La Motta in the ring but damaged his relationships away from it.
De Niro literally becomes La Motta in the film. It is arguably his most ambitious performance, not least in his physical transformation, but in his portrayal of a wholly unsympathetic hero.
3. Heat
Dir. Mann (1995)
Heat gains notoriety for bringing De Niro and Pacino together on-screen, something that didn’t happen in The Godfather Part II in which they both starred but didn’t appear in a scene together.
In Heat, Pacino plays LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna. His exhaustive pursuit of master thief Neil McCauley (De Niro) culminates in the pair meeting in a café. Despite their conversation taking place in a comparatively mundane setting considering the unforgettable police shootout that later takes place, the scene is just as explosive.
It’s one of American cinema’s greatest single moments. Two veteran actors who have each appeared in seminal films that have not only been celebrated with industry accolades and critically acclaimed but loved by audiences, coming together.
What makes it even more iconic, is that it happens just once. A fleeting meeting between two staunchly committed individuals – each finely tuned to their professions – who find an affinity with each other despite being on either sides of the law.
2. Taxi Driver
Dir. Scorsese (1976)
Robert De Niro clocks in, in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
De Niro takes that twisted psychosis and peculiar sense of comic absurdity from Mean Streets and adds another level to it in Taxi Driver. This is De Niro at his most raw.
He plays Travis Bickle, a lonely New York City taxi driver, who becomes obsessed with New York political campaign volunteer Betsy (Cybill Shepard).
His insular outlook on life is compounded when he convinces Betsy to go on a date with him on the pretence that he wants to volunteer as a representative of the senator she works for. He takes her to see a Swedish sex education film which Betsy storms out of.
Bickle becomes angry at Betsy’s avoidance of him and channels his outrage on to the street where, night after night, he witnesses petty crime and prostitution. Buying guns from a local dealer he becomes a vigilante when shooting a man trying to rob a shop.
He then witnesses twelve-year-old prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster) fighting with her pimp and tries to help her. Sending her $100, he tells Iris that he will soon be dead. He then sets off, guns in hand, to assassinate both the senator and Iris’ pimp.
Taxi Driver is a pressure cooker of anger and frustration. It is brilliantly written by Paul Schrader, directed with streetwise naturalism by Scorsese (iconic sequences include the bloody shoot-out at the pimp den, and De Niro posing in front of a mirror with his guns), and features one of De Niro’s best tour de force performances.
1. The King Of Comedy
Dir. Scorsese (1982)
What The King of Comedy magnifies is De Niro’s capacity to shield the fragilities men often feel obliged to conceal with an aesthetic distraction; here it’s loud cream suits, a silly lampshade moustache and a head full of one-liners.
The New York backdrop is not the only similarity with his Rupert Pupkin and, for example Johnny Boy in Mean Streets or Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Each of these men under Scorsese’s watch and De Niro’s lead are battling agonising inner demons that are dismissed by a destructive mentality and odd compulsions.
De Niro is responsible for an astonishing range of iconic performances, his talent putting him in an exclusive group of male actors who have left an indelible mark on contemporary American cinema.
And while the physical exploits of his method acting approach will continue to see Raging Bull listed amongst his all-time greatest roles just as the legacy of the influential Taxi Driver and groundbreaking The Deer Hunter will remain career-defining highlights, it is in The King of Comedy, where he finds a unique, comically cartoonish pathos, that distinguishes it from all others.
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