Robert De Niro’s least favourite kind of actor: “I don’t like that type”
If there’s one person qualified enough to talk about movie acting, it’s Robert De Niro. Not only does he have the awards to back up any of his claims – two Oscars, two Golden Globes, a Critics’ Choice Award, etc – but he has lived and breathed cinema for over 60 years. From his first movie appearance, an uncredited extra in the Marcel Carné movie Three Rooms in Manhattan, to his upcoming dual role in The Alto Knights, it’s been one hell of a ride.
During that time, De Niro had plenty of opportunities to form an opinion on what makes a great actor. He’s had a front-row seat to some of the greatest performances of the modern era and worked with the very best of the best. However, when it comes to what he doesn’t enjoy, his view is informed by a movie that was released before he was born.
“I don’t like that Gone With The Wind type of acting,” he once told The Face. “Clark Gable was a good actor, but he always played himself. It’s the same with Humphrey Bogart; he just plays Humphrey Bogart. I prefer actors like Walter Houston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He is a real actor. The problem is the right script. If there was a good script, I would do those charming characters, too.”
As painful as it might be to admit, De Niro has a point. Gable’s performance as Rhett Butler is legendary, one of the key points of the most successful movie in history, but is there much of a difference between this character and his one from It Happened One Night? Or San Francisco? Or Red Dust? The same applies to Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Rick Blaine is Bogart, a suave, handsome, fast-talking man about town. It’s still a fantastic casting choice – it’s hard, if not impossible, to imagine anyone else in this role – but is it acting in the traditional sense? Probably not.
This interview was conducted in 1987, and in the years since then, De Niro has fallen into this trap a few times. He’s most famous for playing gangsters, and is there really that much to differentiate ‘Ace’ Rothstein in Casino from Al Capone in The Untouchables? Frank Sheeran in The Irishman from Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas? There are certainly more discernible differences than with Gable or Bogart’s most famous roles, but De Niro definitely isn’t exempt from falling into a pattern.
It’s important to remember that De Niro made this claim before a lot of those films had come out. By 1987, the star had shown that he was capable of a diverse range of characters in iconic movies: Taxi Driver, The Godfather Part II, Raging Bull, The Deer Hunter, The King of Comedy, Brazil. He’d even gotten the chance to work alongside Anjelica Huston, granddaughter of his idol Walter, on the movie The Last Tycoon. Ironically, his role in that film, a charming, sharp-suited executive, was eerily reminiscent of the parts Gable was playing in his prime.
The ‘actor’ versus ‘movie star’ debate has raged on since the format was invented and will continue to burn for as long as people watch films. De Niro made a very salient point when he chastised the heroes of the past, but to steal a line from Harvey Dent, he might have lived long enough to see himself turn into a villain.
