The role Robert De Niro always regretted missing out on: “Bob wanted that part very badly”
Just look around the streets of Hollywood, though they may be paved with gold, there is no actor with a more glittering career than Robert De Niro. Widely regarded as perhaps the finest actor of his generation – and a few others to boot – the star of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and about 100 more incredible titles has a career so esteemed that it is rarely brought into question.
In fact, his roles are so varied, so deeply buried within the human condition, and so neatly placed upon the pedestal of what it means to be a truly great performer that some of his more schlocky movies can be overlooked. For every Bad Grandpa, there is Casino, worried about his turn in Rocky & Bullwinkle, then sit back and refresh your mind and soul with Raging Bull. Suffice it to say that there are few areas of the acting world that De Niro has not explored and improved.
It might seem strange to focus on one man’s resume, but De Niro’s is particularly pulsating with incredible movies. A Bronx Tale, Awakenings, Jackie Brown, The Untouchables, and Cape Fear are all the kind of pictures that would illuminate a regular actor’s career, but for De Niro, they barely break the top ten of his most beloved work.
What’s even more impressive is how quickly he began to get these roles. Following his feature film debut in Brian De Palma’s 1968 movie The Greetings, De Niro would quickly begin working with ‘New Hollywood’ and its greatest filmmakers. De Palma would lead to Roger Corman, which would lead to Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. It ensured that he could soon pick and choose the movies that he wanted to make. It could leave you thinking that the performer had no picture, that he really missed out on.
But, of course, that isn’t true. Nobody is 100% available, and nobody can make the exact right choice at the right time every time. This means that over the years, De Niro missed out on a few roles, but perhaps the one that irked him most was Axel Freed in The Gambler.
Released in 1974, the movie predates De Niro’s dominance of those kinds of roles, and it was clear that he desperately wanted the part. Starring alongside Paul Sorvino and Lauren Hutton would have been a dream, but it was the gravity and grittiness of the movie that likely appealed.
Martin Scorsese’s trusted casting director Cis Corman remembered the movie being a particular sore spot for De Niro as she began casting for Taxi Driver: “Irwin Winkler brought me into the group as casting director. I had worked with Irwin on two films, Up the Sandbox and The Gambler, and I met Bobby De Niro when I was doing The Gambler. Bob wanted that part very badly, and I wanted him to have it. But the director ended up casting Jimmy Caan.”
It meant that “When Irwin said, ‘I’d like you to meet Bob De Niro,’ I was a nervous wreck.” However, she needn’t have been. While the movie likely annoyed De Niro for a while, the reality is that he didn’t quite have the same presence as Caan at that time. He needed to foster his talent and prime himself to enact his machismo a little heavier. Thankfully enough, he happened to be a part of Taxi Driver, arguably the best movie of the 1970s, and the film that sent De Niro on his path to greatness.
