Robert De Niro

An actor's training

Robert De Niro was born on 17 August 1943 in Manhattan. He trained at HB Studio, Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio and with Stella Adler, who taught him the Stanislavski-based approach of building a character from the inside, body included. After Brian De Palma's Greetings (1968), he broke through in 1973 as Johnny Boy in Mean Streets, his first film with Martin Scorsese.

In 1975 he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as young Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II. Taxi Driver (1976), Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976) and Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) followed.

Raging Bull: a boxer's body

Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980) tells the story of middleweight champion Jake LaMotta. De Niro trained at New York's Gramercy Gym with LaMotta himself and coach Al Silvani, and fought three bouts in a Brooklyn ring, billed as a young LaMotta, winning two. For the retired LaMotta scenes, production shut down for nearly four months, crew still paid, while he put on around 30 kilos eating his way through northern Italy and France.

Scorsese put a camera inside the ring, operated by cinematographer Michael Chapman, and staged the fights like choreography. The boxing scenes ran past their planned five weeks. The film won De Niro the Best Actor Oscar in 1981 and Thelma Schoonmaker the editing Oscar, and the American Film Institute ranks it the greatest American sports film. For boxers, his high guard and the pressure fighter's body work remain a benchmark for on-screen credibility.

Range

Once Upon a Time in America (1984), The Untouchables (1987), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Heat (1995) and Casino (1995) followed. He directed A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006), and co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival with Jane Rosenthal in 2002.

Back in the ring

In Peter Segal's Grudge Match (2013) he faced Sylvester Stallone as two old Pittsburgh fighters settling a rivalry; both trained with coach Bob Sale. Reviews were harsh, but the film openly played on memories of Rocky and Raging Bull. In Jonathan Jakubowicz's Hands of Stone (2016) he moved to the corner as Ray Arcel, trainer of Panama's Roberto Durán (Édgar Ramírez), through the 1980 fights with Sugar Ray Leonard.

Legacy

He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2003, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2011, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 and an honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2025. He has since appeared in Scorsese's The Irishman (2019) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). In boxing cinema, Raging Bull remains his landmark.