Every Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro film ranked from worst to best
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Robert De Niro names the film that “revved” up his career
Still working to a high professional standard, the American actor Robert De Niro is known as one of the greatest actors ever to walk the Hollywood red carpet. An icon of the industry, known for his maverick method acting antics and fervent on-screen performances. De Niro is widely celebrated for his roles in the films of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.
Though he has worked with some of the greatest filmmakers of all time, De Niro will forever be recognised as the iconic collaborator of Scorsese, appearing in Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy and Goodfellas among many other movies. In 1981 De Niro would even win his second Academy Award for Scorsese’s classic boxing movie, Raging Bull, a film that is considered to be one of the best sports films of all time.
Having worked with Martin Scorsese on nine occasions, with the forthcoming release of Killers of the Flower Moon due to bring the tally to double digits, the iconic filmmaker called De Niro “the greatest actor of his generation” when he presented the actor with the Variety Creative Impact in Acting Award. During his introductory speech, Scorsese said De Niro’s “creative impact in acting will always be felt so long as there are actors to express their art”.
The other movie that De Niro was praised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for was the Francis Ford Coppola sequel The Godfather: Part II, where he starred as a young Vito Corleone. Winning the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, De Niro’s celebrated performance would take the actor to all-new heights, even more so than his first collaboration with Scorsese for the 1973 effort Mean Streets.
In conversation with the unlikely publication Cigar Aficionado, De Niro spoke about how he ended up getting the part for the seminal gangster movie. “I had known Francis [Ford Coppola] a little bit before. Mean Streets had come out and he was talking to Marty [Scorsese] the way I understand it,” De Niro recalled, adding, “Marty, I think, showed him that, and Francis wanted me to come out and read for him in San Francisco. Then I got a call a week or two after, don’t bother, the part’s yours. That was it”.
Fate would prove that Coppola’s confidence in the 30-year-old would pay off, elevating the quality of the director’s sequel that co-starred Al Pacino, Diane Keaton and James Caan. In hindsight, his casting merely makes Coppola’s trilogy all the more iconic, particularly as in the first film his role is played by Marlon Brando, an actor that is considered in the same echelons of quality as De Niro.
“Getting the part changed my career, or revved it up, if you will,” De Niro elaborated to the publication, stating that the Academy Award was merely the cherry on top of a fruitful filmmaking experience. “Then winning the Academy Award, you’re kind of guaranteed that you’re going to work again as an actor,” he recalled, adding, “The way I remember it, the movies that were becoming the blockbuster type films, Godfather Part One was the first one that I remember in my lifetime as a young man”.
Take a look at Robert De Niro flexing his acting chops in Coppola’s iconic movie, below.
