Francis Ford Coppola reveals how Robert De Niro landed role in ‘The Godfather’
Director Francis Ford Coppola may have crafted one of the greatest films in history when The Godfather took the world by storm in 1972, but the production suffered with difficulties right from the very start.
The filmmaker spent the entire shoot a whisker away from being fired, and that came after he’d fought tooth and nail to assemble the cast he wanted. The studio was never convinced about Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino was nowhere near the top of the wish list, and yet Vito and Michael Corleone emerged on the other side as cinematic icons.
When the sequel was released two years later, the addition of Robert De Niro to the ensemble saw the head of the crime family make history as the first character to ever be portrayed in two separate Academy Award-winning performances, with De Niro’s ‘Best Supporting Actor’ prize coming on the heels of Brando’s ‘Best Actor’ winning turn.
It was a performance that elevated the actor’s star to a new level the year after Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets had first gained him attention as a generational talent in the making, but it only came about because De Niro had unsuccessfully auditioned for the first Godfather.
In the running for the part of Sonny Corleone, De Niro was ultimately overlooked in favour of James Caan, but Coppola didn’t forget about him. “He had an unforgettable audition for Sonny Corleone that was so in advance of what I could even imagine,” the filmmaker said at a Q&A session in support of Megalopolis. “Because he really nailed that kind of guy.”
Coppola was so impressed by the audition that he offered De Niro the role of Paulie Gatto instead, which he turned down because he didn’t think it was a substantial enough part. However, that didn’t sour the director on the rising star, and he remained at the forefront of his mind when Part II came to fruition.
“I never forgot that, and that’s one of the reasons why I went at this daunting opportunity to have him play the Vito Corleone part that had been made so famous by Marlon,” he explained. “I thought I would do the outrageous and have someone other than Marlon play the role. Normally in a movie, they would have Marlon play it himself, but he wouldn’t look young.”
It was a daunting prospect, but one that De Niro accomplished “beyond my wildest expectations,” according to Coppola, and the Oscar he collected for his troubles was proof enough.
