MSN Movies Legend #2 - Robert De Niro

In 1953, the 10-year-old Robert De Niro made his stage debut playing the Cowardly Lion in his school's production of The Wizard of Oz. Hardly the most auspicious beginning for one of the film world’s most acclaimed talents, you might assume. Just as the Lion learns to show a bit of courage, though, so the role enabled the boy nicknamed 'Bobby Milk' for his deathly pallor to overcome his stage fright, providing a platform for all his subsequent achievements.

 

And what achievements they have been, De Niro searing the screen with a succession of thrilling performances that tapped into the alienation and inchoate anger felt by the post-Vietnam generation. Johnny Boy in Mean Streets, Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, the self-loathing pugilist Jake La Motta in Raging Bull: each have been visceral masterclasses in anarchic energy and jaw-dropping professional dedication. But there were non-Scorsese highlights too: his brutalised Vietnam vet in The Deer Hunter, for example, or his Oscar-winning turn as the young Marlon Brando/Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II.

 

The '80s saw a waning of his pulling power De Niro managed to counteract by turning to character roles – Al Capone in The Untouchables, for instance, or Louis Cyphre in Angel Heart. It was his move into comedy for 1988's Midnight Run, though, that set the tone for his subsequent successes, Bobby deftly subverting his tough-guy image in Analyze This, Meet the Parents and cartoon hit Shark Tale.

 

More likely nowadays to be found behind the camera (most recently on complex spy tale The Good Shepherd) or orchestrating his Tribeca Film Festival, De Niro's recent movies (Righteous Kill, What Just Happened) have hardly set the box office alight. With another collaboration with director Michael Mann on the cards, however, it surely won't be long before the Heat's back on.

Finest Moment:
"Are you talkin' to me?" If any scene epitomises the feral power of De Niro, it's his semi-improvised monologue in front of the mirror in Scorsese's 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver. The actor may have piled on the pounds for Raging Bull and won the Oscar for his pains. If anything, though, his pared-down portrait of simmering rage is even more potent, New York cabbie Travis Bickle embodying the inarticulate fury of a generation with his loony desire to "wash this scum off the streets." With typical dedication, De Niro spent a month driving a taxi in preparation for his role.
 
In His Own Words:
"Acting allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price."

 

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