Robert De Niro is the greatest actor of his generation

Robert De Niro is – as Bananarama so acutely observed – waiting. He has dogged my waking moments these past four months, ever since GQ Editor Dylan Jones kindly asked me to watch all his films and report back. De Niro has made – give or take the odd cameo – 100 movies. He’s got a birthday coming up – his 77th. I was in lockdown. The stars were aligned. The curtains were drawn.

But let’s be clear: this was no hardship. For me – and I’d wager for most moviegoers of my generation – De Niro is the greatest. Not was. Is. My coming-of-age coincided with his arrival on the scene in Hollywood. Not only did he star in an extended run of unforgettable films, but he dominated them with a new kind of performance that took method acting to previously uncharted levels. He got a New York cab licence for Taxi Driver, learnt Italian and lived in Sicily to prepare for The Godfather Part II, put on 60lbs to play Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, learnt the Latin mass for True Confessions and the sax for New York, New York. He was the hardest-working man in Hollywood.

And also the coolest. The mohawk, aviator shades and M65 field jacket he wore in Taxi Driver defined style for the punk generation in the same way that James Dean’s quiff and red Harrington or Marlon Brando’s biker jacket had for rock’n’roll. In the 1970s, when all we had to worry about was nuclear holocaust and no future, De Niro was our man on the frontline, filing reports from the city that, like Travis Bickle, never sleeps. He epitomised urban alienation and outsider status for every teenage trouble tourist. For me, De Niro was New York and New York was De Niro. Both were impossibly exciting.

In 1975 – the year when Taxi Driver was shot – New York was broke. It applied to the federal government and US president Gerald Ford for a bailout and was refused, prompting New York’s Daily News to print its greatest-ever front page, a banner headline that simply ran “Ford To City – Drop Dead”. New York was dirty, dangerous and cheap. This last fact, in particular, made it a hotbed of artistic creativity. Power cuts and looting proved the birth pangs of punk, rap and the rise of artists such as the Greene Street collective and later Jean-Michel Basquiat. Central to and product of this artistic flowering was De Niro, who, in his first decade as an established actor, delivered a fistful of performances that seemed to define the city throughout the 20th century and pay homage to the place that created him.

He was Vito Corleone around the end of the First World War, making people offers they couldn’t refuse in The Godfather Part II, and was the less celebrated but no less brilliant Noodles in Once Upon A Time In America, scaling the crime ladder in Depression-era NYC. Jake La Motta – AKA The Bronx Bull – had his rise and fall in the 1940s and 1950s, while Johnny Boy made blowing up mailboxes for no reason look like a lot of fun in late 1960s Little Italy. Bringing matters so up to date it seemed more like documentary than drama, Travis Bickle – soundtracked by Bernard Herrmann’s dread-filled score – would go north of Central Park at this time of night, any night. De Niro was NYC and NYC was De Niro.

Like Jimmy Cagney had been for my dad, so Robert De Niro became for me. He did New York, he did gangsters, hell, in Mean Streets he even had his own Pat O’Brien in Harvey Keitel, but, like Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, he was versatile and could turn his hand to a musical such as New York, New York or comedy, albeit with a dark twist with characters such as Rupert Pupkin in The King Of Comedy. In the 1980s, he had his pick of parts and for the most part he chose wisely, alternating cameos in the likes of Brazil and The Untouchables with more demanding fare such as The Mission and Angel Heart. In 1988 he made one of the all-time great comedies, Midnight Run, which saw his real gift for comedy given full expression and which – for better or worse – provided him with a template for the latter part of his career.

But as the 1990s dawned, De Niro returned to his outsider roots, teaming up with Martin Scorsese and the magisterial writer Nic Pileggi to create one of the greatest New York gangster movies with Goodfellas. At times, watching De Niro films back to back I feel – not unlike Coolio – I’ve been spending half my life living in a gangster’s paradise, but never more so than with Goodfellas. It is a model of economic writing, multilayered characterisation, blessed with the greatest (and allegedly most expensive) soundtrack of all time and rich in the lore of this thing of theirs, replete with references to Apalachin and various Joes and Jimmys, invariably of the Crazy and Mad variety. It is a beguiling, endlessly watchable concoction. Or as Jimmy Two Times (not to be confused with Nicky Eyes) might say: Goodfellas is a work of unadulterated genius, a work of unadulterated genius.

In the 1990s, crime paid for De Niro. In 1995, working with Scorsese and Pileggi again, he gave us the underrated Casino and, in the same year, Heat, playing opposite his contemporary – and only rival – Al Pacino for the first time to stunning effect. Two years later, he teamed up with Quentin Tarantino in Jackie Brown in what remains the director’s second greatest film, delivering a very different type of criminal to any he’d played before. Invariably, he collaborated with great writers and directors, regularly with brilliant results. Tight, efficient thrillers such as Ronin, written by David Mamet in all but credit, were the result.

And so to the new-ish millennium. A lot of people get in quite a tizz when they talk about De Niro’s career in the 21st century. They point to this or that dud and talk about him destroying or, worse, “sullying” his reputation, as if an actor should keep his or her career in aspic. Sure, he’s made some bad films in the past 20 years, but why should that detract from what he has done in the previous 30? Does De Niro’s appearance in Dirty Grandpa somehow make Taxi Driver a terrible film? Or is his appearance as a gangster in The Family so heinous that it negates all enjoyment of Cape Fear? Obviously not. They even criticise The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle, And there “they” have a point: making a defence for that would require Johnny Cochran at the top of his game. Guess what? Nobody’s perfect.

In reality, it’s the same situation that one sees with Mick Jagger – born within a few weeks of De Niro in the summer of 1943 and whose vocals have so often soundtracked the actor’s on-screen actions. There is no roadmap for a 76-year-old frontman of the world’s biggest rock’n’roll band and neither is there one for an actor who has had a flourishing Hollywood career of almost 50 years. You have to make it up as you go along. There will be missteps along the way, but he’s been involved in plenty of great films in the past two decades – Meet The Parents, Limitless, Being Flynn, The Good Shepherd (which he also directed), The Irishman, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, Joker, What Just Happened, to name but several. Arguably, his influence has never been greater given both his unrelenting work ethic and his impression of Robert Mueller on Saturday Night Live, which has introduced him to a younger demographic. And, personally, I like Machete and who in their right mind would ever turn down the chance to be shot by Lindsay Lohan dressed as a nun?

Does he bring the same intensity to his craft that he once did? No, obviously not. He was 56 when the new millennium dawned – an age at which some people are eyeing early retirement. Give the man a break. He’s not going to gain 60lbs for his next role. Or if he does, he won’t lose it in a hurry. Also, like Michael Caine, one of the few actors to have enjoyed a longer career, De Niro knew tough times before he made it. Unlike many of today’s stars, he was neither Mouseketeer nor child sensation, but a man staring down the barrel of 30 before he got his first break. That might make you think carefully before turning down a role.

Besides, there is a resolute, stoic “never complain, never explain” defiance De Niro has carried about his person throughout his career. He has never seemed unduly bothered by either the praise or the brickbats he has received from critics and has remained largely aloof from the whole business of interacting with the press. Indeed, he has turned the business of saying nothing to the press into the kind of art form that the tight-lipped members of the Cosa Nostra he has so often portrayed would surely admire. He doesn’t exactly take the Fifth when dealing with the media, but it’s not far off.

Though it is a constant frustration to journalists, it’s easy to see why De Niro cleaves to the code of omerta, for there is much in his private life that would be picked over endlessly by the media. When De Niro made his breakthrough in the early 1970s, it coincided with his father, Robert De Niro Sr, coming out as gay. Keeping that on the down-low would have been a priority at the time and perhaps the pattern stuck. Certainly, his personal life has endless fascination. Consider, for instance, the insight offered by Mean Streets’ producer Jonathan Taplin in Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls of De Niro in the mid-1970s.

“Bobby always had girlfriend trouble. He picked these incredibly strong girls, top chicks, always black, and then he’d fight with them all the time.”

And that’s before you get into the fact that he hung out with John Belushi on the day the ill-fated comedian died.

By rationing biographical information and insights into his emotional landscape, De Niro has achieved something that very few film stars manage: he has allowed the public to fill the void with their own imagination and become bigger and more glamorous in the public consciousness as a result. And that is the very definition of a star.

In this respect, he is also undoubtedly helped by his leading-man good looks. How do you describe his looks? It’s not just that he is handsome – he obviously is, he’s a film star, and the kind of film star British girl groups sing about. (On that note, Bananarama did apparently consider serenading Al Pacino, but this name didn’t scan as well.) But more to the point, De Niro always looks right. Whatever the role, whatever it demands, he looks the part. Whether its’s Deep South psycho Max Cady in Cape Fear or the slaver-turned-Jesuit, Mendoza, in The Mission. Part of that is down to meticulous preparation; part of that is God-given. When he played opposite Bill Murray in the excellent Mad Dog And Glory, in which he is the mild-mannered crime scene photographer Wayne Dobie, while Murray is the high-rolling mob boss Frank Milo, the costume designers apparently couldn’t get anything to look right on Murray and couldn’t get anything to look wrong on De Niro.

His enduring influence on movie style was acknowledged in the 2012 exhibition at the V&A, Hollywood Costume, where he and Meryl Streep were singled out as illustrative of having shaped both movies and fashion in a profound way. In a section titled “The Art Of Becoming”, five of De Niro’s most iconic movie outfits were reproduced – Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Rupert Pupkin in The King Of Comedy, Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, The Creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Sam “Ace” Rothstein in Casino. Martin Scorsese commented, “The costume of the character is the character – the tie a man wears can tell you more about him than his dialogue.” Never was this truer than in the case of Scorsese’s muse, De Niro.

That influence on the world of fashion is echoed by his influence in popular culture. De Niro’s performances are deeply embedded in the public psyche and continue to resonate. Not least with maniacs. On 30 March 1981, the day that John Hinckley attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, the FBI questioned De Niro, Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader because Hinckley cited Travis Bickle as his inspiration. Hinckley was obsessed with impressing Jodie Foster and had watched Taxi Driver 15 times. More recently, in Andrew Hankinson’s brilliant, unsettling book You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat], we learn that the Geordie murderer, on leaving Durham jail, immediately availed himself of “a gun and a haircut like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver”. Last year’s Joker, which features an excellent cameo from De Niro himself, draws strongly on the themes of The King Of Comedy and Taxi Driver. If Joker had been a record, it would have had to pay royalties. And let’s not get started here on how indebted The Simpsons’ writers are to De Niro. Let us just say, as Bart once did in a thinly veiled reference to The Deer Hunter, “What part of diddy mao don’t you understand?”

De Niro’s place in popular culture is undisputed, but his rise to stardom was far from preordained, despite his obvious talent. Nessa Hyams, casting director on The Exorcist and Blazing Saddles, has spoken candidly of how much of a struggle it was for De Niro before his breakthrough in Mean Streets. Words to encourage any aspiring thespian.

“You couldn’t get De Niro arrested,” she told Peter Biskind. “We schlepped him into every reading for every director we could and he wouldn’t talk and we’d go, ‘But he’s so talented,’ and the director would go, ‘Thank you, next!’”

The turning point, of course, was the relationship he forged with fellow New Yorker Martin Scorsese, which has seen the pair collaborate on nine films thus far in their careers. Like all great artistic relationships, each provided the other with something they craved. For Scorsese, De Niro’s middle-class upbringing and his exposure to a bohemian world of art and literature was the stuff of the director’s childhood fantasy, while for De Niro, Scorsese was authentically of the street and could make him appear gritty and tough in a way that belied his upbringing. It was the perfect match. Nor was their relationship simply professional. When Scorsese’s drug habit had taken him to death’s door in the late 1970s, De Niro was instrumental in bringing him back from the brink, forcing him to work on Raging Bull and thus reviving his career as well after the crushing failure of New York, New York.

There hopefully will be more Scorsese-De Niro collaborations. Killers Of The Flower Moon, adapted from David Grann’s acclaimed story of the murder of Osage Indians in 1920s Oklahoma after the discovery of oil on their land, is one which looks likely. There should have been others, notably The Departed, for which Scorsese was desperate to get De Niro to play the role of Frank Costello, which ultimately was taken by Jack Nicholson. That would surely have been a good fit. He also (wisely) turned Marty down for the title role in The Last Temptation Of Christ. And whether he would have cut it in Tom Hanks’ role in Big or as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Lambs, as once looked likely, we will never know.

I have a theory about actors. No matter how brilliant they are, they’re nearly all replaceable. Meaning if the excellent X didn’t exist, there’s the incredible Y or unbelievable Z waiting in the wings who would take his or her place in a heartbeat and be just as brilliant. There are thousands of great actors. Which is not to denigrate their craft or pretend it’s easy – there just are. There are far fewer great musicians, artists and comedians. I think this is why actors are traditionally so insecure. They know there were a dozen people back at drama school every bit as good as them. But I have a list – and it’s a fairly short one – of actors who are not replaceable, who, through a combination of looks, talent, intelligence, great application and an equal amount of luck, have managed to bring something to their art that no others could and fashion careers that prevail over time. De Niro is on that list for all those reasons, but he has done more. Time magazine once called him the “Phantom of the Cinema” and with his shape-shifting, weight-shifting approach to his craft, it is no overstatement to say that he has redefined what we can expect of an actor.

In a rare insight to his working methods, he once said, “My joy as an actor is to live different lives without risking the real-life consequences.” Guided by this simple principle, De Niro has lasted the course and starred in more classic films than any other actor alive and, therefore, Robert De Niro is not just on my list, he’s top of it.

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