This week in cinemas, Robert De Niro is going head-to-head with another icon of the silver screen... Robert De Niro.
Yes, the Oscar-winning legend is taking on dual roles in long-gestating mob biopic The Alto Knights, where he stars as rival mob bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello after Frank survives a hit Vito put out on him. You could say that it puts De Niro back in his comfort zone, with a string of gangster classics from The Godfather Part II to Goodfellas in his back catalogue – but any cinephile knows his filmography is far more eclectic, with far more to offer than gritty crime masterworks.
With the performer taking his first lead role in a theatrically released movie since 2020’s The War With Grandpa, there’s no better time to count down our 10 favourite performances of his career, from his intense breakout roles in the 1970s to his gradual reinvention as a reliable comedic character actor. It’s the rare career where you could make an equally strong list out of the films which didn’t make it into our ten, but we think the ten we’ve chosen best represent his enduring status as a screen icon.
10. Once Upon A Time In America (1984)
Even the most antisocial criminals De Niro has played have been defined by the magnetic charisma he brings to them. In Sergio Leone's gangster epic, a multi-generational saga which returned the actor to a sandbox similar to The Godfather Part II, there’s no similar appeal – Noodles is a cold, emotionally stunted individual, his evil a foregone conclusion after initially being recruited to help gangsters as a kid.
It’s not the first or last time De Niro has played someone irredeemable, but it’s the rare time where there isn’t a magnetism that draws you in. That neither the actor nor director attempt to redeem him should leave the audience detached, but the collaborators manage to subtly establish him as a tragic figure, long before we see the contents of his opium-dazed memories.
09. The Intern (2015)
By the mid-2010s, De Niro’s regular appearances in Hollywood comedies had long worn out their initial charm, with his Meet the Parents role spawning several lesser ones riffing on his tough guy persona. It’s in this context that Nancy Meyers’ gentle workplace comedy The Intern is one of his most revelatory late-career roles, with the actor finding new life cast against type as a kindly widower who winds up working at an online fast-fashion startup.
We’re not going to suggest that the film itself is of the same stature as the others on the list, but his performance is. Through the way he not only plays against preconceived notions of the archetypal De Niro character, but underplays rather than call attention to the ways he’s working against type, he charms his way into our hearts in a way Travis Bickle never could; there’s no wonder Quentin Tarantino said he should have won an Oscar for it.
08. Heat (1995)
Few performances in cinema have ever gone quite as big as Al Pacino in Heat and Michael Mann’s crime thriller wouldn’t work if you didn’t have a more subtle second lead to stop the coked-up cop sucking all the oxygen out of the room. De Niro was the first of the pair to be cast, and was also the one responsible for sending the script over to Pacino, which naturally helped him build the icy foundations for his character in opposition to a conflicted protagonist defined by his obscene outbursts.
The result is one of the few instances where typecasting works perfectly, with Mann’s screenplay elegantly breaking down the moral complexes of heroes and villains in a way which finds new depth in the most archetypal of roles for the pair.
07. Midnight Run (1988)
After starring as Al Capone in The Untouchables, Robert De Niro decided it was time to branch out and star in a comedy, but the first role he was offered – the leading role in Big – ended up going to Tom Hanks, as the studio didn’t feel he would make sense as a comedy star. This was understandable considering his purest appearance in the genre, The King Of Comedy, was regarded as one of the decade’s most notorious flops at this point, with a critical reassessment still far away on the horizon.
Luckily, Midnight Run is a perfect comedy vehicle for the actor, playing into his tough guy persona just to deflate it the more we discover that bounty hunter Jack Walsh is a ridiculous figure, constantly cracking bad one-liners like the star of a movie nobody’s watching. He's a figure subtly silly enough that, when placed next to Charles Grodin as one half of an odd couple, it’s not immediately apparent that Grodin is the straight man next to him.
06. Cape Fear (1991)
A remake of the Gregory Peck legal revenge thriller likely felt unnecessary, even courtesy of Martin Scorsese, who took over the project when Steven Spielberg stepped down to make Schindler’s List. However, the legendary director’s brutal update of the story was given an extra jolt of energy courtesy of De Niro, in the most unrestrained performance in his entire filmography.
Just like his friend Pacino, he's one of the few actors who can successfully go this big without becoming too silly, and Max Cady is a villain whose over-the-top deviousness would likely be laughable in anybody else’s hands. However, as a rare opportunity for him to give himself fully to the dark side, with none of the complexity of his earlier Scorsese anti-heroes, it’s one of his most purely enjoyable performances; this is a character so damaged he’s embraced the villain persona long placed on him, and it’s a thrill to see play out.
05. Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023)
In a career littered with some of the nastiest pieces of work ever put onscreen, it’s almost impressive that the most deplorable of them all didn’t come to fruition until this current late career stage. The actor’s most recent collaboration with Scorsese is less of a return to earlier antihero form than it is a weaponisation of the friendly, comic persona he’s cultivated in recent years, with William King Hale calmly orchestrating the mass murder of the Osage Tribe for their oil, as he presented himself as a friend and ally.
Scorsese’s epic drama tackles the banality of evil, with King’s unassuming nature and community spokesperson status blinding many of those around him to the horrors he’s capable of. More than 50 years after his screen debut, it’s still common to be surprised by the moral depths De Niro’s characters can sink to; his attempts at charm and affability are arguably the most chilling aspects of King’s calculated public face.
04. The Godfather: Part II (1974)
Imagine having a career strong enough that a defining turn in the most beloved movie sequel of all time – which won you an early Best Supporting Actor no less – couldn't top this list of your best performances with a bullet. It’s even more impressive considering that he was given the daunting task of bringing a new depth and perspective to a character made immediately iconic by Marlon Brando a couple of years earlier.
For those who hadn’t seen the actor stride onto screen in Mean Streets and weren’t aware of his early promise, then this was as impactful an introduction as any, establishing him as the rightful heir to Brando as the intense, chameleonic thespian who could disappear into any role. Star making vehicles don’t get better than this.
03. Raging Bull (1980)
The performance that cemented De Niro as Hollywood’s method actor-in-chief came via his fourth collaboration with Martin Scorsese, where he trained for several months with the real Jake LaMotta to authentically play the former boxer – and even asked the production to pause for a few months so he could go on an eating tour of Italy, rather than use prosthetics for the later scenes.
The actor’s commitment even stretched to helping Scorsese cast non-professional actors – including a restauranteur called Joe Pesci – in supporting roles, and rewriting dialogue on the fly. If he disappears into the role in a way that seems effortless, it’s because he lived and breathed this project to an extent rarely matched elsewhere in his career.
02. Taxi Driver (1976)
Prior to Raging Bull, De Niro delivered on the early promise that he could become one of the greats via one of the most intense, controversial character studies committed to screen. Travis Bickle remains the blueprint for every actor playing a mentally disturbed figure, but few seem to remember that De Niro underplays the role more than is remembered; in the cultural imagination, Taxi Driver is misremembered as a violent movie full of searing monologues, even though its central figure is more brooding and interior than its most famous sequences suggest.
The key to the movie is the ambiguous ending, a possible dream sequence where Travis Bickle imagines himself as a hero who has achieved his purpose of “cleaning up” a crime-ridden city. De Niro approaches Bickle as a man who perceives himself as a conventional screen hero in a story of his own making, establishing himself as a leading man by warping the very nature of what a leading man in a movie should represent.
01. The King Of Comedy (1982)
Widely panned by critics at the time, with Entertainment Tonight even dubbing it the “Bomb of the Decade”, Scorsese’s tale of warped celebrity obsession is now seen as a worthy companion piece to Taxi Driver, managing to maintain some of that film’s intensity even within a sillier story about an aspiring comedian who kidnaps a talk show host. However, despite the critical revisionism towards the film in the past decade, with the film now commonly accepted as one of Scorsese’s very best, Rupert Pupkin is still rarely included in the actor’s top-tier of performances.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s the most revelatory in his filmography, as the first real showcase of his comedic abilities without diluting the inherent sociopathic tendencies of its central characters. Whereas his later appearances in studio comedies would aim to subvert his more firmly established tough-guy persona, The King Of Comedy is a far richer example of him taking the characteristics of a damaged Travis Bickle-type, and playing up their inherent ridiculousness, losing none of the richly drawn qualities of a disturbed character archetype despite the dramatic shift in context.
It’s a tonal tightrope few actors could pull off, and the dark comedy naturally proved overwhelming for audiences at the time. Coming two years after his second Oscar win, it was this underseen gem that showed De Niro at the full peak of his powers.
The Alto Knights is in UK cinemas from Friday, 21st March.
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