Analyze These: Robert De Niro’s best performances, ranked
In honor of the two-time Oscar winner's 80th birthday, we're counting down his finest work, from the dramatic (Goodfellas) to the comedic (Meet The Parents)
Film Features De Niro
Robert De Niro, who turns 80 on August 17, has spent nearly 60 of those years as a working actor, becoming one of the most respected names in his profession in the process. The New York-born son of a noted abstract expressionist painter, the young De Niro was a serious student of the Method, studying at the Stella Adler Conservatory and Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. These immersive Method techniques would serve him well over the course of his long acting career, which includes nine films directed by Martin Scorsese (not counting 2015’s The Audition which cost $70 million and was only 16 minutes long), of which seven are on this list of his greatest performances. He’s been nominated for eight Academy Awards and has won two (Best Actor for Raging Bull and Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather: Part II).
While De Niro has starred in dozens of films over more than half a century, not every project has properly showcased the full extent of his brilliance. But he’s proven a consistently titanic on-screen presence, working in a variety of genres and with some of the world’s greatest filmmakers, proving time and again why he’s considered one of the best actors in cinema history. He can make a mighty impression in a film despite limited screen time (see: Brazil), he can find the perfect line reading to make a small scene into a classic (see: the “you blew it” scene from Cop Land), and he can discover new and fascinating ways to play well-worn character archetypes (see: his autumnal performance as a gangster in The Irishman).
So in honor of De Niro’s 80th birthday, we’re ranking his finest performances as we await his 10th appearance in a Scorsese film, the October release Killers Of The Flower Moon. Whether De Niro’s Killers performance finds a place on our next ranking of his best is yet to be determined. Even if it doesn’t, De Niro’s place in the cinema firmament is well secured.
64 Comments
Jack Walsh/Midnight Run should be much higher. The movie is great, and DeNiro is tough, funny, and seems to be having a blast. Sorry but I don’t think his performance in The Irishman was one of his 10 best.
I didn’t see your post before I wrote mine, and now there are three posts from Midnight Run fans. Glad to see the admiration for it. Such a fantastic movie.
The Irishman seems to get a pass because it’s likely the last hurrah for Scorsese, Pacino, Pesci, and DeNiro working together.If anything, his performance – as with the others – seems tired.
I caught it recently for the first time in probably 10 years. What a stone classic. And he’s far better in that than in The Irishman, where he’s frankly not asked to do a whole lot. Very quiet performance.
I really like how DeNiro channels the energy of his character in Jackie Brown in the Irishman: a straight take on the silent, possibly dim-witted doormat of a gangster.
I did love the end of The Irishman, when the FBI are trying to get him to spill any part of what he knows, and he refuses despite the fact that every person involved is long dead.
Everytime I see The Irishman mentioned I get a sort of “am I the only sane person here” thing going. The de-aging tech was awful. Comically, unbelievably awful. I’m just mystified why everyone didn’t laugh their asses of at a man supposedly in his early 30’s at the oldest, moving like an 80 year old man, and looking absolutely nothing like 30 year old DeNiro.
“And why do people like the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns when the blood is clearly ketchup and the words don’t sync up with their mouths???”Sorry it didn’t work for you! I thought I’d be nitpicking but once I got into the movie I didn’t notice it at all.
Agreed on Irishman. It’s actually kind of a one-tone performance. He’s always contained, never able to fully smile (or show almost any emotion). A big part of the problem is the cgi-makeup-whatever. It looks really bad, fake, and funny at times.
I was just thinking of the Midnight Run scene this morning as an example of great understated acting.
i.e. 20th century De Niro, plus The Irishman
I love how highly his performance as Jack in Midnight Run ranks. I rewatched this recently and it’s surprisingly affecting for an ‘80s buddy comedy. His scenes with his daughter were really heartbreaking. Good work!
Ok list. Swap Casino with the Irishman and move up Midnight Run. The rest is fine.
His role as Louis Cyphre should be higher as well. Underrated.
I knew what 1-4 would be. I have to say I can rewatch Goodfellas more than either Godfather 2 or 1. Glad to see Heat at #5. I saw that in the theater when it came out and man that theater was hushed silence the whole movie as people were into everyone.
The final bank heist is one of the best action sequences ever. Talk about being dropped right into the middle of the action. The one thing that always stuck with me was the rare movie acknowledgement that a duffel full of cash is going to be HEAVY. Watching them fight their way up the street carrying those bags looks grueling.
Yeah and that’s what made it seem so much more real. Something heavy will always slow you down and too many movies act like everything is light aas a feather!
Not sure I would put Goodfellas so high. Yeah, its the second or third best movie DeNiro has been in, and he does everything and more that’s expected of him in the role, but it’s hard to see Goodfellas as tour de force DeNiro movie, particularly when Pesci’s and Liotta’s performances are also so dominating.
And I disagree with this assessment of the character. He may be the brains of the crew, to the extent they have any, but other than that he’s a shell. Pesci is the only person he cares about at all.
Yeah, and this line seems… kind of odd: but as his friends descend deeper into violence and drugs, he also has to be the voice of reason, the conscience of the group. If anything, his character is the one who descends the deepest into violence out of the trio. He’s neither the voice of reason nor the conscience, he’s the paranoid psychopath behind the killings of the Lufthansa heist crew.If anything, that describes DeNiro’s role in Casino, but certainly not Goodfellas.
I could see him as the conscience in so much as he tries to stop Tommy and Henry from doing dumb stuff that will definitely get them killed, but I wouldn’t attribute that to a moral code so much as a not being an idiot code.We can argue how reliable of a narrator Henry Hill is but he literally says: “Jimmy was the kind of guy that rooted for bad guys in the movies.”
Once Upon a Time in America at twenty-fucking-four? Jeez, he’s had some career.
“Awakenings” and “The Irishman” don’t belong in the top 10 ahead of either “Midnight Run” or “Casino.” And I love “Cop Land” but DeNiro’s performance barely cracks the top 10 in that movie (Stallone, Keitel, Liotta, Moriarty, Rappaport, Sciorra, Falco, Spencer….)
barely cracks the top 10 in that movie (Stallone, Keitel, Liotta, Moriarty, Rappaport, Sciorra, Falco, Spencer….) You must have run out of space because you forgot Garofalo. Seriously though, that cast was stacked and I liked the movie a lot. No offense to DeNiro but I hardly remember it.
‘YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE AND YOU BLEW IT’
Anything else in his career is dwarfed by his masterful line reading of “You blew it!” in Copland.
When can we stop pretending that the lead actor in “The Irishman” wasn’t a brown bear wearing an off-brand Halloween mask?
DeNiro’s performance in “True Confessions” has to appear in his top five. It’s towering in its subtlety and nuance.
“It’s one of De Niro’s most exaggerated performances, but the bigness of the work doesn’t detract from its impact.”Ermmm…agree to disagree.I re-watched this recently (about a year ago) after remembering that I hadn’t been a fan of his spin on the character, back when I’d originally watched it around when the movie came out.My already low opinion only withered.I don’t know WHOSE choice it was to portray the character like a coke-addled love-child of Foghorn Leghorn and Pepe LePew, but it was painful.
How much of this piece was compiled by AI?
Wouldn’t surprise me, since the list names his characters in Casino and Goodfellas correctly, but seems to confuse DeNiro’s performance of them with each other.
Whoa, I’ve never even heard of “This Boy’s Life” – Yeeeesh that one looks like a rough watch.
It is that, though very much worth your time for his, DiCaprio’s, and Ellen Barkin’s performances. Interestingly, at the behest of Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese took an interest in DiCaprio’s career:“After ‘Goodfellas,’ he [De Niro] did ‘This Boy’s Life.’ We were talking on the phone, about what I’m not quite sure. He said, ‘I’m working with this young boy. You must work with him sometime.’ That was the first time I heard him recommend somebody to me. ‘The kid is really good.’ he said.”
Where’s ‘Mad Dog and Glory’? A great and quirky performance genre swapping with Bill Murray.
For all his hype and method acting, there’s so much about DeNiro that falls absolutely flat for me. The man has almost no character range. He can be very engaging and entertaining as “the tough DeNiro type”, especially when the camera is dollying in on his face, but he’s also utterly devoid of anything outside of “Robert DeNiro reading lines” at multiple critical points in movies he’s famous for, including Goodfellas and Once Upon a Time in America. Don’t get me wrong, I love DeNiro when he’s cast well, but all the adulation for his acting ability seems to be clouded by Dads wishing they could look cool while holding a rocks glass.
Hot take. Horrible, but definitely hot.
Even if De Niro isn’t your personal favorite actor, you have to at least acknowledge that his pre-00’s filmography is pretty staggering. There isn’t a bad film on this list, with multiple ones that are all-time greats. That’s where a lot of adulation comes from.
You’re totally right. And he’s often one of the most solid or entertaining parts of those movies. But you could listen to audio of his dialogue from individual movies, stuff that isn’t quotable or memorable, and you’d probably have a lot of trouble telling one character from another.
This just isn’t true. Compare a character like Johnny from Mean Streets to Jake Lamotta from Raging Bull. Or Rupert Pupkin from King of Comedy to Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. Or Leonard from Awakenings to Jimmy from Goodfellas. These are very different characters. De Niro is known for his subtlety. He’s not Daniel Day Lewis. On the surface they may seem the same, because it’s always the same guy with the same voice, but I think you’re only considering his tough guy characters.
Sometimes his acting is so obvious, it jars me out of the movie.
There we have it folks, the dumbest take on the internetTry watching Heat and Jackie Brown back to back and tell me he’s just playing the same character
The line between “internal/restrained” and “sleepy” usually depends on what’s happening around him. I like him a lot in the first half of The Deer Hunter because he’s surrounded by exciting stuff like an Orthodox wedding (by far the best part of the movie) and a POW camp. But in the second half of the movie he has to contend with overacting, boring symbolism, and the movie’s incomprehensible timeline. His schtick works pretty well in Once Upon a Time in America when his character is supposed to be exhausted and defeated, but there’s a chunk of the movie where he’s being upstaged by James Woods, William Forsyth, and the young actor who plays him in the early timeline.
Surprised to say I feel like his role in Joker belongs on this list— he pulls off the feat of realistically portraying a late night talk show host comedian who’s incredibly popular in spite of being an unfunny hack *cough* Leno *cough*
I’d place Louis Gara in Jackie Brown much higher on the list. Great use of De Niro’s low-energy, internalized style to convey that character’s terminal burnout. I’d also replace his Louis Cyphre in the ridiculously dumb Angel Heart with an early performance for Brian DePalma, like Jon Rubin in Hi, Mom!
Sure, Jack Walsh seems like it should be somewhere in the Top Ten… But overlooking “Jacknife” (1989) is criminal. No one who’s seen it wouldn’t rank it among his best. (Some would say the same for him in “The Mission”, but I could see that one getting barely edged out.)
Man, I haven’t seen Jackknife in years. You’re right, it really is great. Ed Harris does some fine work in it too. (So does Loudon Wainwright, in -I think- his one scene..)
Love Midnight Run. The scene where Jack sees his daughter always leaves me in tears.
Love The King of Comedy being this high. One of his most fascinating and underrated performances.
His best, to my mind.I used to play that movie in the video store and someone inevitably would have finally heard some given scene while they were browsing for something to rent. They’d gravitate toward one of the screens on the wall and watch the movie for a bit, then turn to me and go, “What is this? Who is that?”I’d say it was DeNiro and they’d go, “No….” and turn back and watch some more, then realize in horror and disbelief, “Oh — it is!” and watch some more, fascinated, then tear themself away and not rent it.I’m glad that people seem to have caught up with it now.
It was only a matter of time before De Niro decided to poke fun at his gangster movie persona…I don’t know that that really felt all that inevitable at the time, tbh.
Pretty good list. I would have to argue that Louis Garza should rank higher, though – that’s a genius performance, all the more impressive because Louis rarely, you know, talks. The scene where he’s got the phone clamped to his ear, and it’s just ringing, ringing, ringing…..while Louis just stares off into space…..and Ordell finally has to almost yell “Louis? Is she there???”……..just kills me every time.
All I can tell you is this bit of dialogue from Analyze This has stuck with me since the movie:
Dr. Ben Sobel: You don’t hear the word “no” a lot, do you?
Paul Vitti: I hear it all the time, only it’s more like “no, please, no!”.
I would have added his role as Victor Tellegio in American Hustle to the list. It was an uncredited cameo, but his was my favorite performance in the movie. It was a gangster role he could have easily phoned in, but instead he brought some real weight to the part, and made most of the rest of the cast look like they were playing dress up. Not Christian Bale or Amy Adams, but pretty much everyone else. Won’t single any one out, but if you’ve seen the movie, you know who.
Cape Fear is absolutely awesome
Hawt shawt.
til this day my father and I still quote Analyze This in a De Niro voice “you, you’re good you.”
[Doesn’t even bother clicking the slideshow, just scrolls to the comments to see if Midnight Run made it into the top ten, sees that it didn’t.]Well, this is some bullshit.[Closes the page.]
De Niro’s alright. He’s no Kevin Sorbo, but he’s alright.
A little off topic, but it’s sickening that Taxi Driver did not win the Best Picture Oscar but The Departed did. It’s what my crude friends call a pity fuck.
Taxi driver behind anything but raging bull maybe makes the whole list irrelevant.