Which movies did Robert De Niro win an Oscar for?
Despite spending much of the last two decades plumbing the depths with low-rent comedies and direct-to-video thrillers that seem wildly beneath his talents, Robert De Niro is still considered one of the greatest actors who ever lived.
The fact that someone can still be held in such high esteem, no matter how many Dirty Grandpas or Righteous Kills he makes, is a testament to the overwhelming strength of De Niro’s early career.
In the 1970s alone, Little Italy’s favourite son made four stone-cold classics, with fiercely committed performances that helped change the way cinephiles and critics alike viewed acting. He then added another couple of classics in the early ‘80s, before segueing into a different phase of his career that saw him marry method acting rigour with A-list leading man charisma.
In this era, De Niro spread his wings and worked more than ever before, mixing iconic supporting turns (The Untouchables) with hilarious comedy leads (Midnight Run), crime thrillers (Cop Land) with sensitive dramas (This Boy’s Life), before he settled into his latter period status as a grim-faced thespian who could add gravitas to any film, but also skewer his self-serious image when the mood struck him.
This De Niro wasn’t giving himself over to a role for two years anymore, exhausting his mind, body, and soul, as he did in his breakthrough years, but he still made a lot of damn good films. By the time De Niro reached the 2010s and 2020s and his grip on quality control truly began to slip (then lose traction altogether), he’d already made so many truly brilliant films that his eight Oscar nominations seem a little light.
To prove this point, here are the Academy didn’t nominate for a handful of performances and movies De Niro: Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, Louis Cyphre in Angel Heart, Jimmy ‘The Gent’ Conway in Goodfellas, Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein in Casino, Neil McAuley in Heat, Frank Sheeran in The Irishman, and Jack Byrnes in Meet the Parents. (Yes, I think he deserved an Oscar nomination for Meet the Parents. It’s actually one of the most perfectly written and performed comedies of the last several decades. I’ll die on that hill. Please don’t stop reading.)
So, which movies was De Niro nominated for?
Setting aside these films, which would have nabbed nominations for most other actors, it’s worth clarifying the nominations De Niro has received over the years. He was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ twice, and ‘Best Actor’ six times, with the first six nominations coming in the 17 years between ‘75 and 1992. He then had to wait over two decades before he was back in the conversation again in 2013, and another decade for his most recent nod in 2024.
De Niro’s ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nominations came for The Godfather Part II, his role opposite Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook, and opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in 2024’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
His ‘Best Actor’ nods came for Taxi Driver in 1977, The Deer Hunter a few years later, Raging Bull, Awakenings a decade later, and Cape Fear the following year. All in all, it’s hard to argue with most of these nominations, as De Niro is excellent in each and every one of these films, although I’ve never been a big Silver Linings Playbook guy. Still, was De Niro the best part of that strangely overhyped David O Russell picture? Yep.
…and which movies did he actually win for?
Shockingly, out of eight nominations, De Niro has only taken home an Oscar twice. Even more alarmingly, this means he hasn’t actually won an Academy Award for 44 years and counting. Fittingly, though, his first win came with his first nomination for playing the ambitious and ruthless young version of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II.
Hilariously, De Niro wasn’t at the ceremony to pick up his trophy in person because he was shooting Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 in Northern Italy at the time. Italy is nine hours behind America, so he didn’t even discover he’d won until the next morning, and he couldn’t watch his win because the Oscars weren’t shown on Italian television at the time. To be honest, though, it sounds like he wouldn’t have cared a whole lot, as he once confessed to Seth Meyers, “I didn’t think much about it.”
De Niro’s second (and, to date, final) win came in 1981 courtesy of his searing, heartbreaking turn as boxer Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Did he deserve to win for the movie? Certainly. Is it strange that this is the only Scorsese movie that De Niro has picked up an Oscar for? Yes, definitely. However, once again, De Niro probably doesn’t lose much sleep over these things, as he once mused, with characteristic understatement, “If you’re nominated, you already won.”
