Robert De Niro names the greatest period of his career: “We were lucky”
Robert De Niro is as big a name in cinema as any. Well into his 80s, he’s still winning awards and near-universal acclaim. He’s made some really stupid films along the way, but they still have their fans, including Roger Ebert. And there are probably some people out there who liked 2016’s Dirty Grandpa.
But we don’t really like to remember Robert De Niro for the forgettable films he made to pay a tax bill or whatever. He’s put on iconic performances for the best of the best, most notably Martin Scorsese–but also Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann, Terry Gilliam, Sergio Leone and many, many more. Too many to mention.
At the height of his powers, we remember De Niro’s run of films from the 1970s and ’80s, your Taxi Driver’s and Raging Bull’s, The King of Comedy, Casino. You know the list. Everything De Niro did in the afterglow of his Oscar for The Godfather II. His commitment to the role was something he’d carry through his career, having spent quite some time in Sicily making sure he got the dialect exactly right. De Niro took his roles seriously.
This was what caught Martin Scorsese’s eye and the two went onto have a lifelong partnership, there aren’t many films in Scorsese’s repertoire that don’t have a grimacing Robert De Niro pretending to be Italian. Seriously, look it up. He’s only ¼ Italian.
Speaking to Flatt Features, De Niro says “They all stand out in certain times and in certain ways. I consider myself very lucky to be able to do what I have been doing and get paid for it too. They are all different. There is no one period, I mean. The only thing was when I was younger and at a certain point when I was doing certain independent films.” And although he denies periodizing his career into neat categories, there’s a sequence of films that stands out to him. As to most of his fans.
He reminisces further about his golden age, remembering “Then, all of a sudden I was in Godfather II which sort of catapulted me career-wise into another era because I was able to do other things… So the period that stands out was when Scorsese and I did Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, the King of Comedy, New York, NY. All of those films we did at that time, the ’70s or mid-80s. We were lucky to be able to do that.”
At 81 years old, De Niro is still going strong. He’s starring in the upcoming movie The Alto Knights–believe it or not–about the Italian Mob. Not content to act as one Italian Mobster, he actually portrays two, playing the historical made men Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. It’s worth noting that De Niro played an Irishman in The Irishman, as you might be able to determine from the title. You may even have been bored enough during lockdown to sit through its three and a half hour runtime.
