Robert De Niro’s Best, Worst and Craziest Performances

One of the greatest American films ever made, and one of the greatest screen performances ever given. For all of Martin Scorsese’s stylization in this film — think of those demonic plumes of steam, those grotesque streets, those tense, militaristic montages — it’s so clear that he’s basically handed the reins over to De Niro. As Travis Bickle, “God’s lonely man,” a Vietnam vet who takes a job driving cabs by night, the actor has to perform an unholy bait-and-switch: He has to win us over, make us relate to him, and then slowly let his psyche unravel while still keeping us watching. By the time Travis has gone completely thermonuclear, we’re so invested in his character that it’s like a part of us has gone mad as well. BE

Anyone wondering what De Niro looks like when he can’t even bring himself to pretend to care about a part? Look no further than this buddy-cop movie that pairs him with Eddie Murphy, in which the actor plays a veteran detective who gets paired with the comedian’s fame-seeking hotshot for a reality show. The film’s sole clever bit involves bringing in William Shatner, as himself, to help teach De Niro’s character how to act. It might have been funnier if Shatner didn’t seem far more engaged with the material than his co-star. KP

De Niro packed on the muscles and perfected a Southern accent for this big, broad turn as ex-con and murderer Max Cady, newly released from prison and ready to make his lawyer (or, rather, his “cooouunnseeeluuuuh”) Nick Nolte suffer for not properly representing him. Yet another Scorsese collaboration – but this remake of an old Sixties suspense flick is far from the world of mob rituals or submerged existential psychoses. Rather, it’s a sweaty, deliberately overbaked movie, dripping with atmosphere. De Niro’s performance is strange, off-putting, almost comically broad – but also kind of perfect for the sleazy, unhinged tone of this thriller. BE

De Niro’s Oscar-winning role as self-destructive pugilist Jake LaMotta is the stuff of Method-acting legend: He sculpted his body and trained rigorously to mirror the prizefighter’s exploits in the ring. Then the star packed on 60 pounds to play LaMotta as a washed-up, grotesque shell of his former self, mining his fading celebrity for jokes. But De Niro’s physical transformation alone can’t account for the greatness of his performance, which is like a burbling cauldron of jealousy, resentment, and self-hatred. The same forces that make heavyweight champ an explosive athlete inside the ring eat him alive when he’s outside of it, and the actor treats him like a man imprisoned by his own psyche. ST

You’d think that a crime comedy in which Robert De Niro plays a mob snitch forced to relocate to France with his family under the Witness Protection Program would be an easy win for the actor, right? Right?!? But the weird tonal mishmash of Luc Besson’s ludicrously violent, overcooked, and not particularly-funny laffer gets the best of the actor. And Michelle Pfeiffer, playing his bored, hair-trigger wife, acts circles around him. BE

De Niro has a relatively small role in Terry Gilliam’s dystopian masterpiece about a society drowning under comical, murderous levels of bureaucracy. But it’s a doozy: He plays a former air conditioning repairman and wanted outlaw who joined the Resistance after having to deal with too much paperwork. As such, he gets to do decidedly un-De Niro-ish things like swoop in on wires and get swept away in a tornado of paper. It’s a bizarre role, but he brings a level of welcome playfulness to it. BE

For this Oscar-winning gangster movie — the capo di tutti capi of sequels — De Niro had to give a convincing answer to a difficult question: How did a poor, sickly immigrant from Sicily grow into the scion of the Corleone crime family? His fresh-faced Vito represents a dark parallel to the classic American success story, a first-generation entrepreneur who scrapes and claws — and, in his case, kills — for every patch of territory. He grows into the character Marlon Brando plays in the first Godfather, but De Niro’s performance suggests that you can’t become the man behind the desk without getting your hands dirty first. ST

It’s often De Niro’s job to be the still, calm center of a movie — an acting choice that might have made sense for this adaption of producer Art Linson’s Hollywood memoir, which surrounds him with show business craziness on all sides. Instead, De Niro, playing a fictionalized Linson for director Barry Levinson, goes loud and demonstrative, making the character seem almost as unhinged as those around him. What just happened, indeed. KP

Acting challenges don’t get much harder than playing characters with neurological conditions, and if Awakenings doesn’t feature one of De Niro’s very best performances it certainly features what must have been one of his most difficult. His Leonard Lowe is a man who revives from decades-long catatonic state thanks to an experimental treatment administered by Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams, playing a fictionalized version of Oliver Sacks, who wrote the memoir on which it’s based). De Niro is convincing as both a catatonic and as a man in the grips of tics and spasms as the treatment starts to fail. It’s hard to watch largely because he makes it seem so uncomfortably real. KP

Maybe age and three Meet The Parents movies have softened De Niro to such an extent that it’s easy to forget the attributes that made him such a sensation in the first: He was wired, spontaneous, dangerous. As Johnny Boy in his first of many storied collaborations with director Martin Scorsese, the future greatest-actor-of-his-generation is introduced casually tossing a bomb into a mailbox; later, he strolls into a bar with a girl under each arm, to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” For his buddy Charlie (Harvey Keitel), a small-time gangster looking to climb the ladder, Johnny Boy is the quick-burning fuse he can’t stamp out, but De Niro plays him as carefree and bulletproof. He’s too confident to acknowledge his recklessness. ST

Maybe De Niro was drawn to this tedious thriller because he liked the blunt social commentary of the premise: Two young Eastern European mobsters film their New York crime-spree and sell the tapes to a tabloid TV show. But during his heyday, the actor almost never took a role as nondescript as the arrogant cop he plays here. Writer-director John Herzfeld tries to toy with his star’s screen image a little — even throwing in a scene where he talks to himself in a mirror, Taxi Driver/Raging Bull-style — but  any middle-aged movie star could’ve done this part. Even worse than straight-up bad De Niro? Boring De Niro. NM

Scripted by Kenneth Lonergan, this adaptation of Jay Ward’s witty animated series contains more clever touches than it got credit for at the time. But it’s frequently undone by over-the-top performances from the human villains played by Jason Alexander, Rene Russo, and De Niro (who also co-produced). To be fair, you can’t really accuse the Oscar-winning actor of being cartoonish here — as he’s actually playing a cartoon character. Still, the moment in which De Niro, as the monocle-sporting Fearless Leader revisits his “Are you talking to me?” monologue from Taxi Driver pretty much defines the word “nadir.” KP

“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you’re not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” That’s the mantra that guides De Niro’s professional thief in Michael Mann’s epic crime drama, and it’s also the mantra that dictates his performance — cool, distant, calculating, and assertive only when it needs to be. Though his character is written as the yin-and-yang flipside to Al Pacino’s tempestuous detective, De Niro isn’t all steely reserve. No one can live that perfectly detached, so when a loose cannon causes a job to go south or the right woman sidles up next to him at a diner, his meticulous planning goes out the window. His thief works diligently to a higher standard, but the actor subtly reveals the hairline cracks in the armor. ST

There are lame romantic comedies, and then there’s Hindenburg of a movie, in which De Niro and Diane Keaton play exes who pretend to still be married for their adopted son’s wedding to an extremely devout Catholic. (Long story, but no, it doesn’t make much sense in the movie either.) Guess whose relationship is rekindled? Wackiness ensues…except that it doesn’t, given that this is totally generic, predictable, middle-of-the-road goo. It’s one of the worst films De Niro has made in recent years – all the more frustrating because he actually makes an effort to give some life to the script’s tired, unfunny jokes. BE

Kenneth Branagh’s histrionic adaptation of the classic Gothic horror novel goes all the way to 11: It’s so over-the-top, so stylized, and so filled with booming, scenery-chewing performances that you kind of can’t help but admire it – even though it’s never, ever convincing. And De Niro, as “The Creation” (aka Frankenstein’s Monster), is actually quite touching as a broken half-man aware of his existential predicament. The disconnect between his quiet pathos and the rest of the film’s manic energy is distracting, though bonus points to whoever did his stitched-together-from-corpses make-up job. BE

One of De Niro’s greatest roles is also one of the few times he played a criminal without trying to lend him any nuance or humanity. As a tubby, preening, big-talking Al Capone, our man Bob is both monstrous and comical, like a character out of one of the mobster’s beloved operas. But what comes through most in the performance is contempt: This is a man who thinks very little of everyone around him. It’s perfect for the movie, too; the more ruthless Capone seems, the more we root for Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness to do everything he can to bring him down “the Chicago way.” It’s a performance of shockingly urgent villainy. BE

In this unconvincing, nonsensical thriller, Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver play paranormal investigators who specialize in uncovering hoaxes perpetrated by people alleging to have experienced supernatural occurrences. De Niro plays a famous blind psychic who might turn out to be the real deal. He camps it up like nobody’s business, which actually seems to be a wise decision given the sheer ridiculousness of this film. Alas, everyone else seems to be taking everything very seriously — which just leaves the Oscar-winning star choking on the chewed-up scenery. BE

Funny thing: Director Neil Jordan’s much-derided Christmas comedy about two hoodlums (De Niro and Sean Penn) hiding out as priests in a town near the Canadian border is not as bad as its reputation. (This is an atmospheric Neil Jordan movie with a screenplay by David Mamet, based on a Humphrey Bogart classic – really, that’s worth something right there.) It is, however, a very strange film, not the least of which is because of all the relentless over-acting of its two leads. One senses that De Niro in particular is trying to channel the spirit of Bogie, complete with old-school tough-guy affectations. (That voice!) But the result isn’t so much funny as it is straight-up surreal. BE

“Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime.” This is how Rupert Pupkin justifies his scheme to kidnap a late-night talk show host (Jerry Lewis) and negotiate himself as his replacement in Martin Scorsese’s jet-black comedy about ambition and celebrity. In De Niro’s hands, Rupert’s delusions of grandeur toggle between the identifiable failings of a never-will-be comedy superstar and the ultimate manifestation of our psychotic obsession with fame. Though The King of Comedy flopped, Rupert has since become a touchstone for stand-up comedians who see him as their worst image of themselves — an awkward, desperate, pathetic hack clinging fiercely to the business of show. ST

De Niro playing a mob boss? Not a stretch. Nor it is a particularly big part in this lackluster thriller — he’s simply drop in for a second and hires John Cusack to pick up a mysterious bag — but the veteran actor is there more to lend some authority to the proceedings then anything else. That might have worked back in the days when he was known for his demonic intensity, but nowadays, it just comes off like another paycheck gig. There’s only so much he can do with a part that consists mostly of poorly-written exposition. BE

Don’t puzzle over the name of De Niro’s character, Louis Cyphre, too long: It takes Mickey Rourke’s private eye the entire movie to figure out the identity of the dark — some might say, devilish — client who has enlisted him to track down a dangerous WWII vet in New Orleans. The actor lets his beard do much of the work for him while Rourke acts himself into a spittle-filled fit in reaction to his implacable evil. (“If I had cloven hooves and a forked tail, would I have been more convincing?”) It’s the most dignified role in a thriller that’s overheated even by Big Easy movie standards, and the mark of a career shift when De Niro seemed to realize that he had enough screen presence to carry a scene without so much as shaking a cane. ST

Michael Cimino’s Best Picture winner takes a lot of flak these days – it probably doesn’t help that the director himself famously crashed and burned with his subsequent efforts. But it still holds up remarkably well, and that’s largely thanks to De Niro. We knew he had range, but this is something else: As one of a group of friends who leave their Pennsylvania steel mill town for Vietnam, he starts off as a practical, no-nonsense good old boy. As the war changes him into, first, a sociopath, then a broken man struggling to heal, we realize that we’re watching more than a character: We’re watching an entire generation. BE

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: De Niro’s performance in the first Meet the Parents film, playing Ben Stiller’s highly paranoid and judgmental father-in-law-to-be, is one of his best comedic performances, proving that he could get laughs and be part of comic ensemble without mugging it up. By the time the third film in the series came around, however, De Niro had settled for a lifeless, one-note shtick. In his defense, it’s not like anyone else in this film is trying that hard either. But still. BE

Alfonso Cuarón’s modernized adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel is a puzzling misfire, one of those movies in which a talented cast, a great director, and strong material can’t bring it all together. Still, don’t blame De Niro, who brings full-throated abandon to his portrayal to the convict who terrorizes a child into helping him escape then re-enters his life in a different capacity years later. There’s real menace in his performance in the film’s early scenes, in which he plays the character as a sort-of cross between his Cape Fear villain and a pirate. KP

Scorsese’s hilarious, terrifying epic about the rise and fall of mobster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is a feast for every actor involved — and a chance for De Niro to play both cool and collected and violently unhinged. Yes, his Jimmy Conway, the responsible leader of our protagonist’s crew, does occasionally blow up, and it’s electrifying when he does. (Remember the scene where he destroys a phone after hearing that his friend has been whacked?) But it’s an incredibly controlled performance, and what makes the role work is De Niro’s ruthless calm: When his character eventually turns on Henry, he does so in such a calculating, chilling manner that you might have nightmares about it for weeks. BE

The one-joke premise of 1999’s Analyze This cashed in on De Niro’s gangster-movie glower by playing his threats and vulgarity against the bromides offered by Billy Crystal’s lily-livered psychiatrist. But that joke was barely enough to sustain one comedy, let alone two. Which means that the de facto sequel simply leaves his wisecracking wiseguy to curse his way through sitcom fish-out-of-water situations:  strolling through a wake with an open robe, taking customer-service jobs as part of a work-release program, etc. Analyze That even reunites him with his Raging Bull co-star Cathy Moriarty, a reference that only serves to underline how far the mighty have fallen. ST

Before he was a master of the post-Hitchcockian psycho-thriller, Brian De Palma made these two experimental, free-wheeling comedies about youth and counter-culture. And before he was a master of neurotic intensity, De Niro played a lovesick, nebbishy young man whose experiences took him through a cross-section of American society. The films demonstrate that De Niro’s comic abilities were always there, but it’s amazing to see him play an Everyman type — a sort of calm before the Method storm. And he’s surprisingly likable! BE

In what is widely acknowledged as his breakthrough performance, De Niro plays a not-too-bright baseball catcher with a terminal disease, and Michael Moriarty the pitcher who befriends him in his final season. This is the kind of drama that will leave you an utter emotional wreck – and that it does so with such restraint and dignity feels like a magic act. De Niro is the key: He would soon build a career for himself playing deadly loners, but here, he uses his natural reserve to build a character whose loneliness evokes sympathy and reflection, not fear. It’s an almost unbearably moving performance, in an almost unbearably moving film. BE