The iconic movie role that made Robert De Niro feel “terrible”
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro remain one of cinema’s most iconic director-actor pairings. First working together on 1973’s Mean Streets, De Niro rose to greater prominence after the duo’s second collaboration, Taxi Driver, was released in 1976. While the film is often hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made, Scorsese and De Niro further proved their prowess with 1980’s Raging Bull, which is often dubbed with the same high praise.
Clearly, when Scorsese and De Niro work together, there is a certain level of understanding and connection that brings out the best in both of them. With Raging Bull, De Niro gave the performance of his career, earning himself an Oscar for ‘Best Actor’. The movie came to fruition after De Niro read Jake LaMotta’s autobiography, persuading Scorsese to make the movie despite the director’s initial hesitancy.
The film follows LaMotta through his time as a middleweight champion and his subsequent demise, highlighting his volatile nature and complicated personal relationships. The film gave both Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty their breakthrough roles, their performances highly praised alongside that of De Niro’s. The movie might not have been a significant commercial hit, but it was critically heralded.
De Niro was incredibly dedicated to his role, going as far as to gain 60 pounds to play the boxer after his downfall. This sharply contrasts his muscular appearance during the rest of the film. To make this drastic physical transformation, the actor gorged on food in a way he’d never done before. Naturally, this left him feeling absolutely “terrible”.
Talking to Playboy, De Niro revealed the eating habits that led him to gain such a striking amount of weight. “At first, it was fun. I ate ice cream and everything I wanted—it’s like part of the fantasy that one has about eating everything. I took a tour through France, from Paris to the Riviera, stayed in inns and ate. And for two weeks, I was miserable because as good as the food was, it’s rich — you could eat only one big meal a day and then lie there, digesting it.”
He continued: “But I’ll never, ever eat like that again — it gets boring, it’s tiring, and I did it in a fast way. I felt terrible. After 15, 20 pounds, it was hard work. I had to get up early to eat a full breakfast and digest that in order to eat a full lunch and digest that in order to eat a full dinner. And lots of Di-Gel or Tums.”
However, De Niro was fascinated by the boxer’s transformation, and he wanted to experience it for himself. “I didn’t want to do it with just make-up. I wanted to really do it so you could see his stomach. So I thought, Let me try this as an experiment. I said, ‘Shut down the production.’ Marty and I planned it. There was something about Jake — he was a young fighter, and then he let himself go and it was so sad, in a way. To see that deterioration and to capture it on film was really interesting to me.”
