Matt Damon’s favourite Robert De Niro movies: “I love him a lot”
With the careers of the most distinguished actors spanning decades, it’s a line of work more than most others where the next generation regularly gets the chance to work with their heroes, which worked out very well for Matt Damon when he got a double dose of Robert De Niro.
Whereas Martin Scorsese’s original muse was indebted to Marlon Brando for the way he fine-tuned his own approach to the craft, there are a mountainous number of modern-day stars who look to him as a touchstone they’d love to not only emulate but share the screen with.
For Damon, that moment arrived with the 2006 espionage drama The Good Shepherd. It didn’t just put them in the same ensemble and allow the former’s protagonist, Edward Wilson Sr, to get wrapped up in a complicated web of intrigue alongside De Niro’s Bill Sullivan, either, but the latter also served as the film’s producer and director.
Seeing as three of the five films Damon named as his five favourites of all time gave De Niro top billing, it would probably be an understatement to suggest The Good Shepherd will always stand out to the Academy Award winner as one of the most unforgettable moments of both his personal and professional lives.
The Good Will Hunting scribe and platonic life partner of Ben Affleck celebrated Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II as being a movie that’s “pretty near perfect”. As the sequel to one of the best films ever made—that’s also one of the best films ever made—it’s an entirely valid point that will stand until the end of time.
Lightening things up, Damon nodded towards Midnight Run as being another example of prime De Niro at his finest. “That was a movie that in college and in high school, my friends and I could quote probably every line of that movie,” he told Rotten Tomatoes. “My friends in college, we’re now in our 50s, but we can come up with obscure lines out of that movie and instantly crack each other up through texts. It’s just a beautifully acted movie and still makes me laugh.”
Even though 60% of his top five was comprised of De Niro classics – with Goodfellas inevitably making the cut, too – Damon was adamant that he “didn’t do that on purpose”. It’s clear as day he’s a massive fanboy, and he wasn’t shy to admit it: “I am a huge fan of his, though, and I love him a lot”.
Not that there’s any shame in being a fan of an all-time great who evolved into a respected elder statesman of the moving image, and it must have been a pinch-me moment for Damon when he got the call about The Good Shepherd and discovered he’d be acting opposite and being directed by the living legend who made such a huge impact on him.
