De Niro, Robert (1943—)
For approximately a decade from the mid-1970s, screen actor Robert De Niro came to embody the ethos of urban America—most particularly New York City, where he was born, raised, and educated—in a series of performances that demonstrated a profound and introspective intelligence, great power, and the paradigm skills of the acting technique known as the Method at its best.
In his gallery of violent or otherwise troubled men and social misfits, it is in his portrayal of Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) that his image is likely to remain forever enshrined. As the disturbed, nervy, under-educated Vietnam vet who, through the skewed vision of his isolation and ignorance, sets out on a bloody crusade to cleanse society's ills, De Niro displayed an armory of personal gifts unmatched by any actor of his generation. The film itself was a seminal development in late-twentieth-century cinema, and it is not too fanciful to suggest that, without its influence, certain films in which De Niro excelled for other directors, notably Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978), might not have existed—at least not in as uncompromising a form. It is impossible to catalogue or categorize De Niro's work without examining his significant actor-director relationship with Martin Scorsese, for, while the actor's substantial skills and the concentrated intensity of his persona were very much his own, it is to that symbiotic collaboration that much of his success could be credited.
This page contains 201 words.
De Niro, Robert (1943—) article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 1,954 words
(approx. 7 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Robert De Niro Article
