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Though he has never consistently ranked as one of the industry's most popular or highly paid stars, Robert DeNiro is recognized as one of Hollywood's most well-respected actors. A Method Actor from the beginning, DeNiro partially built his fame on the lengths to which he would go to immerse himself in his roles. Although his prolific career has been checkered with hits and misses, his performances have remained consistently solid. Unlike some other much higher-profile actors who draw from their own experiences or always allow something of themselves to remain visible in their roles, DeNiro becomes his characters, revealing nothing about himself in the process.
Born August 17, 1943, in New York City to a family of artists, DeNiro was named after his father, who was a poet, sculptor, and painter. The actor's mother, Virginia Admiral, was also a painter and was divorced from the his father shortly after DeNiro's birth. Growing up in Little Italy, he was a small, shy child whose scrawniness earned him the nickname "Bobby Milk." His acting debut came at the age of ten, when he played the Cowardly Lion in a production of The Wizard of Oz. Following this debut, he abandoned the theater in favor of involvement with a small-time street gang, but the siren song of his first paycheck for his performance in Chekov's The Bear called him back to acting at the age of 16. After training with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, DeNiro launched his professional career on stage, working on and off Broadway, in dinner theater, and in the occasional television commercial.
The actor made his first film appearance as an extra in Marcel Carné's Trois Chambres a Manhattan (1965). The following year, he successfully auditioned for a small speaking part in The Wedding Party (1966). During filming, he was befriended by one of the co-directors, Brian De Palma, who provided the young actor with his first leading part as a draft dodger in Greetings (1966). Unfortunately, the film was a flop, failing to find much of an audience. The same was true of his third film, Sam's Song (1969) (which was re-cut and re-released as The Swap a decade later to exploit DeNiro's popularity). It was actress Shelley Winters, acquainted with DeNiro since they studied with Adler, who provided him with his first break by casting him as her drug-addicted, dim-witted son in the low-budget film Bloody Mama (1970). Though something less than a towering cinematic achievement, the film began to open doors for DeNiro in Hollywood. He continued appearing in low-rent roles until he was cast opposite Michael Moriarty in the moving Bang the Drum Slowly in 1973; his portrayal of a simple-minded professional baseball player suffering from Hodgkin's disease earned him Best Supporting Actor kudos from the New York Film Critics. That same year, the actor enjoyed another critical triumph with his role as the volatile, deeply troubled Johnny Boy opposite Harvey Keitel in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and the film marked the beginning of DeNiro's long and celebrated association with the director.
The actor's next big break came the subsequent year, when Francis Ford Coppola cast him as the young Don Corleone (originally played by Marlon Brando) in the acclaimed sequel The Godfather Part II. For his subtle, multi-layered portrayal (his flawless accent came from hours of studying and practicing a Sicilian dialect), DeNiro received his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. In 1976, he courted further acclaim in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, as tortured loner Travis Bickle, a role he prepared for by spending days in New York cabs observing the drivers. The film, and DeNiro's portrayal of Bickle, became one of the most celebrated of the actor's career and established him as one of the decade's rawest and most compelling new talents. He followed up Taxi Driver with New York, New York (1977), another Scorsese collaboration that saw him play struggling musician Jimmy Doyle opposite Liza Minnelli; although the director's uneven attempt at a noirish Hollywood musical was greeted with a lukewarm reception, DeNiro's work as Doyle helped to broaden his range beyond the confines of crime-oriented films .
DeNiro encountered greater acclaim in 1978, for his riveting performance as a steelworker whose life is irrevocably changed by his experiences in Vietnam in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. He then won another Oscar in 1980, for his performance as self-destructive boxer Jake LaMotta in Scorsese's powerful Raging Bull. This film is the one most frequently cited when people try to explain the lengths DeNiro goes to, getting into character; in this case, the actor gained 50 pounds to portray LaMotta in his seedy old age.
Following this tremendous success, he continued to do some of the best work of his career in collaboration with Scorsese. He received particular acclaim for his work in the director's Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995), both of which are widely held to contain DeNiro's strongest work of the 1990s. However, the actor did turn down his friend for what could have been a career-altering role: in the late '80s, Scorsese approached DeNiro with the opportunity to star in the lead role in The Last Temptation of Christ. Ever a Method disciple, DeNiro reportedly declined the offer, saying that he couldn't possibly do adequate research for the part. Ironically, the actor did accept Alan Parker's offer to play Lucifer (also known as Louis Cyphre) in the director's violent noir mystery Angel Heart (1987). To prepare for the three scenes he was to appear in, DeNiro grew long hair and a beard, and read the biographies of some of history's more evil men. Later, Parker talked about his experience working with the actor, saying "When DeNiro walks on the set, you can feel his presence, but he never behaves like a movie star, just an actor. And when he acts, his sheer concentration permeates the whole set." Parker additionally stated that working with DeNiro could be a little exhausting, as the actor was constantly coming up with questions, suggestions, and new ideas.
During the remainder of the 1980s and the early '90s, he played a wide range of roles in films of markedly divergent quality. He turned in some of his most thought-provoking performances in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Martin Brest's Midnight Run (1988), and Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990). Though best known as a serious dramatic actor, DeNiro has occasionally experimented with widely different roles, including a turn as the Creature in Kenneth Branagh's universally panned Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and his part as a bumbling, chronically stoned ex-con in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997). In the late '90s, he continued to display his talents in a number of diverse films, including the 1997 Cop Land, the widely acclaimed action piece Ronin (1998), the lavish 1998 adaptation of the novel Great Expectations, and the 1999 comedy Analyze This, in which he drew raves for his performance a neurotic mob boss. The surprising capacity for comedic work that DeNiro displayed in the latter film was again demonstrated -- to great critical and commercial delight -- in Jay Roach's Meet the Parents (2000), which cast the actor as the exceedingly overprotective father of a young woman (Teri Polo) who brings her unwitting boyfriend (Ben Stiller) home for a weekend to meet her family.
DeNiro also branched out into directing and producing in 1989, with the foundation of his Tribeca Film Center. He made his debut as a producer with Neil Jordan's remake of Michael Curtiz's superior 1955 comedy We're No Angels. Despite a lavish budget and an elaborate set (with rural British Columbia standing in for New England), the film bombed; DeNiro, who also starred opposite Sean Penn, was derided for giving a hammy performance. He made an admirable directorial debut in 1993, with his sensitive adaptation of Chazz Palminteri's one-character play A Bronx Tale and, the same year, executive produced the innovative and critically acclaimed television anthology series Tribeca, which unfortunately failed to capture an audience and was cancelled after only seven episodes. Since then, he has continued to serve as a producer on such projects as the made-for-TV Witness to the Mob (1998) and the 1999 film Entropy. That same year found DeNiro poking fun at his tough guy image with a role as a stressed-out mobster in need of a shrink (Analyze This) and continuing the humorous trend into 2000, with roles in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Meet the Parents.
After returning to the thriller genre in 2001 with 15 Minutes, DeNiro excited fans by re-joining former Godfather comrade Marlon Brando in director Frank Oz's one-last-heist caper film, The Score. Rounding out the exciting cast were acclaimed actors Edward Norton and Angela Bassett.
In addition to his entertainment industry commitments, DeNiro created and co-owns the Tribeca Grill, which is located on the first two floors of his lower-Manhattan film center (which in turn is located in an historic coffee distribution building) and is decorated with his father's artwork
2001
Fifteen Minutes
2001
The Score
2000
The Adventures of
Rocky and Bullwinkle
2000
Men of Honor
2000
Meet The Parents
1999
Flawless
1999
Entropy
1999
Analyze This
1998
Great Expectations
1998
Ronin
1997
Wag the Dog
1997
Cop Land
1997
Jackie Brown
1996
The Fan
1996
Marvin's Room
1996
Sleepers
1995
A Hundred and
One Nights
1995
Heat
1995
Casino
1994
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
1993
This Boy's Life
1993
A Bronx Tale
1993
Mad Dog and Glory
1992
Night and the City
1991
Guilty by Suspicion
1991
Cape Fear
1991
Mistress
1991
Backdraft
1991
More Than a Movie
1990
Hollywood Mavericks
1990
Awakenings
1990
Goodfellas
1990
Stanley and Iris
1989
Jacknife
1989
We're No Angels
1988
Midnight Run
1987
Angel Heart
1987
The Untouchables
1986
The Mission
1985
Brazil
1984
Once Upon a Time
in America
1984
Falling in Love
1983
The King of Comedy
1982
La Vrai Histoire
De Gerard Lechomeur
1981
The Godfather
1902-1959:
The Complete Epic
1981
True Confessions
1980
Raging Bull
1978
The Deer Hunter
1977
New York, New York
1977
The Godfather Saga
1976
Novecento
1976
The Last Tycoon
1976
Taxi Driver
1974
The Godfather Part II
1973
Mean Streets
1973
Bang the Drum Slowly
1971
Born to Win
1971
Jennifer on My Mind
1971
The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
1970
Bloody Mama
1970
Hi, Mom!
1969
Sam's Song
1969
The Wedding Party
1968
Greetings