Foto: Robert De Niro

Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in New York. He’s an American actor famous for his uncompromising portrayals of violent and abrasive characters.

The son of two Greenwich Village artists, De Niro dropped out of school at the age of 16 to study at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting. After working in a few Off-Broadway plays, he appeared in his first film, Brian de Palma‘s The Wedding Party (1963, released 1969). During the next four years he appeared in several minor films.

De Niro worked with some of the cinema’s most noted directors in such films as Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), Elia Kazan‘s The Last Tycoon (1976) and Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978), the last one receiving the Oscar for best picture. But it was his films with Scorsese for which De Niro acquired a reputation for masterfully portraying extremely dark and unappealing figures. He received an Oscar nomination for his role as the isolated and violent Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) and won the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980). Known for his intense role preparation, De Niro spent weeks driving a taxi in New York City before filming Taxi Driver. By the end of the 1970s, he was widely considered one of the best actors of his generation.

In the 1980s he appeared in a series of box office failures that have nevertheless become cult favourite. Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1983), which offered a desolate look at the hazards of celebrity, won critical praise but little public interest, whereas Sergio Leone‘s epic Once upon a Time in America (1984) suffered from postproduction studio interference, as did Terry Gilliam’s futuristic satire Brazil (1985). He revealed a talent for comedy in Midnight Run (1988) and won some of the best notices of his career for his depiction of a catatonic patient in Awakenings (1990). GoodFellas (1990) reunited De Niro with Scorsese for a brutal look at organized crime. Most critics agreed that Scorsese and De Niro had returned to form, but two further collaborations, Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995), were met with mixed reviews.

Daniela Neves   11ºA

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