For the past four-and-a-half decades, American acting legend Robert De Niro has been stunning, surprising, scaring, and charming audiences across the world through a plethora of unforgettable performances. Beginning in the mid-70s, it took a couple of pictures with a couple of brilliant up-and-coming New Hollywood directors for a young De Niro to explode into the zeitgeist, but once he did he remained there as one of the most prominent figures of film culture. Today, he’s closing in on a hundred feature roles, and his name is often mentioned alongside the likes of Marlon Brando as not only one of the most influential actors of his generation, but simply one of the greatest ever. He has done for gangsters what Laurence Olivier did for Shakespeare on screen, and together with life-long friend and fellow New Yorker Martin Scorsese, is responsible for one of the greatest director-actor collaborations in the history of cinema.
While his 21st century roles so far have been patchy at best, and at worst suggest De Niro’s greatest acting years may be behind him, a thousand “Grudge Match“-es and “Last Vegas“-es cannot blemish a career as illustrious as his. Quite aside from the legacy of indelible, endlessly quotable roles he has already attained, De Niro has been active behind the camera, and out in the world too, doing a tremendous amount of good for the film community in his native N.Y.C., mostly through his launch of the Tribeca Film Festival.
READ MORE: Watch: Robert De Niro Goes To Work In New Trailer For ‘The Intern’ With Anne Hathaway
But it is as an actor that he will always be, simply, iconic. And with today being the icon’s 72nd birthday, we felt it was high time to celebrate De Niro’s essential performances. Not only are these 16 roles vital to understanding just how brilliant a talent he is—across an ultra-wide spectrum from cool-headed gangsters and creepy obsessives, to traumatized war vets and insecure husbands—but since they’re essential De Niro performances, they’re unavoidably also 16 essential all-time screen performances, period.
“Mean Streets” (1973)
From his iconic slow-motion entrance to the Rolling Stones’ swaggering “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” to the moment we see him running away from a mailbox that’s set to explode, two things became clear about the screw-up hero of Martin Scorsese’s rough-and-tumble breakthrough “Mean Streets.” One was that Johnny Boy—the personification of that one charismatic, irresponsible screw-it-all friend we’ve all had at some point in our lives–was the more dangerous, but also the more electrifying, fun and exciting of the two protagonists in the picture. But even more clear was that the actor behind the punk-rock posturing, a then mostly-unknown Greenwich Village kid named Bobby De Niro, was destined to be a major star. De Niro had done some fine work in the strange, early pictures of Brian De Palma, but in “Mean Streets,” he emerges as a bonafide screen talent from the very first frame he occupies. Playing the apoplectic, motor-mouthed id to the quiet, soulful heart of tortured hood Charlie Cappa (Harvey Keitel), De Niro is nothing less than a total revelation. As Johnny Boy increasingly gets into worse and worse trouble, refusing to pay his dues or make up for his mistakes, De Niro somehow makes us care about this shameless neighborhood knucklehead, all the way until the film’s brutal sucker-punch of an ending. If there is some poor soul out there who only knows De Niro in his relative post-millennium lethargy, revisiting this raw-nerve performance is step one in discovering what all the fuss is about.
“The Godfather Part II” (1974)
De Niro famously auditioned for the role of Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather,” and lost out to James Caan (watch this clip to get a taste of an alternate film universe). As good as he would’ve no doubt been in that role, not only would we have lost an essential Caan performance, but we wouldn’t have seen De Niro give his Oscar-winning turn as the young Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II,” a role he was much better suited for precisely because it’s leagues removed from the emotionally volatile Sonny. De Niro showed his manic flair for the impetuous in “Mean Streets,” but in ‘Godfather’ his screen presence permeates without the bombast for the very first time, in full Italian, no less. As we watch Michael’s (Al Pacino) grip tighten around the business his father built, Vito’s story from Sicily to Hell’s Kitchen (then back to Sicily to “bring some olive oil” to Don Ciccio) in the early 1900s adds a world of authenticity, complexity, and depth to the ‘Godfather’ saga that wouldn’t have been possible without De Niro’s calculated and masterfully nuanced performance. He found a way to own the same character Marlon Brando immortalized in the first part, ensuring that Vito Corleone remains the most compelling gangster figure in cinema.
“Taxi Driver” (1976)
Film critic and author James Monaco called Robert De Niro the greatest filmmaker-by-association of the 70s in his book “American Film Now,” purely based on the kind of directors and actors he worked with. That high praise is justified, verified, and eternalized for life with a bloody index finger to the temple in “Taxi Driver,” the second of nine dream-team-director-actor collaborations between De Niro and Martin Scorsese. In order to fully absorb the damaged character of Travis Bickle, De Niro went into ultra method mode and drove a taxi around New York City to get a feel for the voyeuristic, and ultimately depressing, lifestyle that comes with the profession. As much as it illustrates Scorsese’s uncanny sense of directing lost New York souls and is a showcase for Paul Schrader‘s greatest screenplay, the first mental image “Taxi Driver” invokes is that of De Niro, standing in front of the mirror, talking to himself, and preparing his one-man-army crusade. The scene—like many others in the film—is essentially transcendent, and De Niro, even with “Mean Streets” and “The Godfather Part II” on his resume, subverts notions of acting to create yet another revelatory performance of profound psychological insight. Point in fact: Schrader’s script simply read “Travis talks to himself in the mirror,” so what we see is pure, raw Robert De Niro.
READ MORE: Watch: 70-Minute Documentary About The Making Of Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’
“The Deer Hunter” (1978)
By the late 70s, De Niro had accumulated enough star power to make or break a film, and if he hadn’t agreed to take on the muted lead role of Mike Vronsky in Michael Cimino‘s “The Deer Hunter,” the picture would’ve likely never seen light of day. Meryl Streep wouldn’t have had the platform to make her indelible screen entrance, Christopher Walken wouldn’t have turned in a searing and unforgettable Oscar-winning performance, and we wouldn’t have had one of the greatest Vietnam films ever made. The world would’ve also missed out on De Niro’s exquisitely controlled and multi-faceted performance, proof of his profound talents when it comes to seamlessly blending into the action of a given scene. Whether it’s quiet self-reflection in a bar or on the mountain tops, the chaotic instability of forced Russian Roulette, visiting a war-buddy in the hospital, or trying to save his psychologically-damaged best friend; De Niro’s Mike is that rare lead performance that’s often sidelined as a witness to the horrors of war and post-war trauma, and the actor embodies the character with the appropriate amount of gravitas and dialed-down charisma. The psychological consequences of war weigh heavy on all the characters in “The Deer Hunter,” but it’s De Niro’s Mike, even with his life and limbs intact, who perhaps bears the heaviest burden of all.
