Given he celebrated his 80th birthday in 2023, there’s no better time than now to celebrate the remarkable acting career of the untouchable Robert De Niro. Born in 1943, his earliest film roles were in the mid to late 1960s, but it was the early 1970s that saw him become a breakout star. Ever since, he’s excelled in both leading and supporting roles across just about every genre out there, and is still active as an actor, with 2023 roles that include About My Father and Killers of the Flower Moon.
His name’s one of the few that’s always guaranteed to be brought up whenever it comes to discussing the greatest movie actors of all time. In addition, going through his decades-long filmography makes it apparent that few, if any, other actors have ever been in as many classic movies as Robert De Niro has. The following titles represent the best of the best within De Niro’s vast and impeccable body of work, and are ranked below from great to greatest.
20 ‘Cape Fear’ (1991)
One of many collaborations between Martin Scorsese as director and Robert De Niro as actor worth celebrating, Cape Fear is the rare remake that does justice to the original and then some. Its premise is the same as the first Cape Fear from 1962, with both movies following the terror a family experiences when a brutal criminal begins targeting them after being released from prison.
De Niro plays that criminal – the fearsome Max Cady – and it’s easily one of his most intense, uncomfortable, and ferocious performances. De Niro also engaged in somehow more method acting than usual for the role, putting on a ton of muscle and spending $25,000 to have his teeth sharpened/ground down before filming, and subsequently repaired after filming. There’s method acting, and then there’s doing what De Niro did for Cape Fear.
19 ‘Meet the Parents’ (2000)
One of the most accessible (and overall funniest) movies Robert De Niro ever starred in, Meet the Parents is an essential early 2000s comedy. Its sequels – Meet the Fockers (2004) and Little Fockers (2010) – are largely skippable, but the original still holds up as a genuinely funny and very easy-to-watch comedy about the difficulty of meeting a partner’s parents for the first time.
De Niro’s the father who clashes with his potential future son-in-law, played by Ben Stiller, with their dynamic largely carrying the movie. Like any comedic film featuring De Niro, it’s nice to see him out of his usual element and excelling nonetheless, with Meet the Parents ranking as one of his best movies of the 21st century so far.
18 ‘American Hustle’ (2013)
American Hustle is a darkly comedic crime movie that’s loosely based on real-life events. It takes place towards the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, following two people who are forced to cooperate with an aggressive FBI agent who makes them enter a criminal underworld, interacting with various people who are affiliated with the mafia along the way.
Those expecting a ton of De Niro might be disappointed, because he’s really just in this as an extended cameo, playing a mafia boss who still manages to be intimidating despite his small amount of screen time. Thankfully, the pace, energy, and star power of American Hustle keeps it engaging overall, even during its predominantly De Niro-free runtime.
17 ‘Casino’ (1995)
Casino was the last collaboration between Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese for close to a quarter of a century, at one point in time standing as an impressive “end” to the string of films they made together. It’s a dark and very violent look at how the mob ran Las Vegas during the 1970s, considering gangsters controlled the city’s numerous lucrative casinos.
It’s not quite the greatest crime movie the two cinematic legends made together, but it has a ton to offer, with a fast-paced epic narrative, plenty of stylish and memorable images, and great performances from the likes of De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci, to name a few. It’s a long and sometimes challenging film, but still stands as an essential 1990s gangster movie.
16 ‘Joker’ (2019)
Filmmaker Todd Phillips wasn’t shy about referencing certain Martin Scorsese movies in his 2019 movie, Joker, and perhaps some of this borrowing was mitigated by casting frequent Scorsese collaborator Robert De Niro. He has a supporting role as a talk show host idolized by the film’s main character, Arthur Fleck.
But the narrative does belong to Fleck, with the film ultimately belonging to Joaquin Phoenix, too, who plays Fleck and convincingly portrays his breakdown and re-emergence as the titular character well-known for being Batman’s arch-nemesis. Overall, Joker might not win many points for originality, but it does earn a good number for the quality of its acting, and the stomach-churning, consistently nerve-wracking story it tells.
15 ‘Mean Streets’ (1973)
The first of many Scorsese + De Niro collaborations, Mean Streets was arguably the film that put both the director and his favorite actor on the map. It’s a loosely plotted film about a group of young men living in New York City, and the things they do while attempting to move up within both the world at large and the mobster lifestyle they find themselves in.
Harvey Keitel (also known for his numerous Scorsese collaborations) is the closest thing to a main character here, with De Niro proving impressive in a star-making supporting role. The energy and vibrancy on offer in Mean Streets ensure it still feels gripping and even somewhat fresh to this day, with its various qualities – and the fact it helped boost the profiles of numerous people involved – ensuring it stands as one of the most historically significant crime movies of all time.
14 ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ (2012)
A romantic dramedy about a troubled young man (Bradley Cooper) moving back in with his parents, Silver Linings Playbook is a movie that manages to be feel-good and also quite realistic/grounded. Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver are featured as the parents, while Jennifer Lawrence (in an Oscar-winning role) plays a young woman Cooper’s character begins a relationship with.
It tackles mental illness in a surprisingly thoughtful way, which is a good thing obviously, because the mishandling of something so delicate could’ve made Silver Linings Playbook a disaster. Narratively and visually it’s sound, but it’s the kind of film you watch for the performances, and thankfully, all the main ones on offer here are very strong.
13 ‘Brazil’ (1985)
Dystopian science-fiction movies rarely get funnier (or darker) than the cult classic 1985 film Brazil. It’s about a low-level bureaucrat who frequently daydreams to escape the mundanity of his existence in a strange futuristic world, only for the lines between his reality and his dreams to begin crossing in disorientating and, eventually, tragic ways.
If that doesn’t make Brazil sound wonderfully wild enough, it’s also a movie where De Niro occasionally pops up as a resistance fighter/freelance heating engineer named Archibald Tuttle, with him stealing every scene he appears in. It’s one of the strangest movie De Niro’s been in, and one of his most unusual roles, but nevertheless, Brazil’s still up there with the best movies he’s appeared in.
12 ‘The Untouchables’ (1987)
Very loosely based on a true story, The Untouchables is a classic crime/thriller movie expertly directed by Brian De Palma at the height of his filmmaking powers. It centers on Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and the team he assembles to target infamous gangster Al Capone (De Niro) in order to take down his bootleg liquor empire during the Prohibition Era.
De Niro really gets to ham it up in the few scenes he appears in as the film’s central villain, with him engaging in more method acting by gaining considerable weight for the role, and also going to great lengths to wear the same silk underwear Al Capone wore. All in a day’s work for the ever-committed Robert De Niro, it seems.
11 ‘The King of Comedy’ (1982)
Despite the title containing the word “Comedy,” it’s hard to define The King of Comedy as one, unless you happen to like your humor very dark and extremely uncomfortable. It’s a tense film where De Niro stars as a man who’s desperate for fame, and will go to great lengths to impress – and replicate the successes of – his idol, a talk show host played by Jerry Lewis.
It was also directed by Martin Scorsese, and ends up being one of his most surprisingly dark and twisted movies. De Niro’s commitment to the lead role is scarily good, and the film offers a persistently queasy and uncompromising watch for those brave enough to handle some very (intentionally) awkward sequences.
10 ‘The Mission’ (1986)
Ranking as one of the best movies of 1986, The Mission is a period drama/adventure movie about redemption, religion, and the human spirit. Robert De Niro stars as an ex-mercenary seeking forgiveness for his misdeeds, which sees him eventually working with Jesuit missionaries at a mission in the South American jungle.
Also starring Jeremy Irons and a very young Liam Neeson, the film sees their characters clashing with various military forces who want the land, despite the missionaries and the Guaraní people they live with wanting to be left alone. It’s a movie featuring amazing visuals and beautiful music (composed by Ennio Morricone), making for an overwhelmingly emotional film that sticks with you long after it’s over.
9 ‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978)
When it comes to ranking the greatest and most acclaimed war movies of all time, The Deer Hunter will frequently be considered up there among the very best. A three-hour movie distinctly split into three acts, it follows a group of men before, during, and after they serve in the Vietnam War.
It contrasts their lives before and after fighting overseas to devastating effect, with the relatively brief Vietnam-set scenes being uncompromising in their approach to depicting the horrors of warfare. It’s a tragic and difficult movie to watch, but contains phenomenal performances from Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken, with Walken winning an Academy Award for his performance.
8 ‘Jackie Brown’ (1997)
Jackie Brown marks the only time Quentin Tarantino and Robert De Niro worked together, but at least it proved to be a memorable collaboration. The film’s a darkly comedic and very stylish crime/thriller, largely centered around a flight attendant who gets caught smuggling cash for a gun runner, and finds herself forced to collaborate with the police.
De Niro’s far from the only actor to make an impression here, because the cast is filled with talented people, including Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, and Michael Keaton. It’s an underrated and very enjoyable Tarantino film, and also feels notable for being a little slower, less violent, and perhaps more mature than the other movies he made during his first decade or so as a filmmaker.
7 ‘Heat’ (1995)
Two actors as beloved as Robert De Niro and Al Pacino appearing in the same movie is always going to be an exciting prospect, which leads to high expectations. Heat’s a movie starring the two that ultimately lives up to the hype, seeing the former playing a calm, collected, and skilled bank robber, and the latter playing a hot-headed and very intense police detective on his trail.
The two great actors get a legendary one-on-one scene in a diner, where their two characters discuss their different outlooks on life and respective professions, shortly before another great scene plays out: a large-scale bank heist that turns into a massive shootout on the streets. Even with just these two scenes, Heat would be a classic, but just about everything else in this nearly three-hour movie also happens to be very compelling, making it an outstanding film from director Michael Mann.
6 ‘The Irishman’ (2019)
The longest of all the collaborations between Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, The Irishman is an epic that shows both still have it in them to make excellent crime movies. It was also the first feature film they’d worked on together since 1995’s Casino, and the nearly 25-year-long wait ended up being worth it.
De Niro stars as an aging hitman named Frank Sheeran, with the film being largely comprised of flashbacks to the death-filled and alienated life he lived, with his various actions in his younger days continuing to haunt him in old age. Like Heat, it also stars Al Pacino (Joe Pesci is here too, stealing scenes as always), and is a phenomenally well-acted slow burn of a movie, expertly building to one of the most devastating and memorable final acts in recent memory.
5 ‘Raging Bull’ (1980)
Robert De Niro won his second Oscar for his lead role in Raging Bull, a film directed by Martin Scorsese that would have to be one of the most intense sports movies of all time. It centers on a boxer named Jake LaMotta, depicting in unflinching detail how his anger helped him in his line of work, but inevitably ruined his life outside the ring.
It’s memorably shot in black-and-white, fitting the looking of old televised boxing matches while also visually adding to the film’s sense of hopelessness and darkness. It’s not an easy film to watch, but it’s an amazing one nonetheless, and easily contains one of De Niro’s best-ever performances (it also might be the movie of his where he did the most full-on method acting).
4 ‘The Godfather: Part II’ (1974)
While Raging Bull got Robert De Niro his second Oscar, his supporting role in The Godfather: Part II was what got him his first. It’s widely held up as one of the best sequels of all time, but it also functions as a prequel for a large chunk of its runtime, with De Niro portraying Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando in the first movie) during his youth, in a series of flashbacks.
Outside the De Niro scenes, the parts of the movie focusing on Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone are also incredibly compelling, taking the saga to darker and more intense places than it had gone in the original 1972 film. Given both characters are separated by decades, De Niro and Pacino unfortunately don’t get to act together here, but at least they would later down the line in films like Heat and The Irishman (the less said about the 2008 movie they both starred in, the better).
3 ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984)
Once Upon a Time in America is one of the longest crime movies of all time, at 229 minutes, and also happens to be one of the greatest crime movies of all time. It spans decades, following a group of young boys who grow up together and eventually form a lucrative criminal gang, but then find themselves torn apart by jealousy and greed.
Robert De Niro portrays the main character, Noodles, both as a young adult and then decades later as an old, regret-filled man. He and the other characters do some despicable things, making Once Upon a Time in America a brutal and challenging film that nevertheless has the feel of an operatic and epic tragedy, all directed to perfection by Sergio Leone (it was sadly the great director’s last film), with the masterful score composed by the inimitable Ennio Morricone.
2 ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976)
Three years on from Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro re-teamed and returned with a vengeance, making another gritty drama set in New York City. That film was Taxi Driver, one of the decade’s most important (and greatest) movies, centering on a war veteran grappling with insomnia, and taking up a job as a late-night cab driver to pass the time.
De Niro eerily portrays a disturbed man losing his grip on reality and becoming progressively more angered by the world around him, eventually lashing out violently against it. Taxi Driver’s among the most intense character studies of all time, and is an overall haunting and unforgettable movie, and would likely stand as the best Scorsese + De Niro movie were it not for another collaboration of theirs that came out in 1990.
1 ‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
When it comes to assessing crime movies, Robert De Niro movies, Martin Scorsese movies, or maybe even just movies in general, next to nothing can touch Goodfellas. It stars Ray Liotta as Henry Hill, a man who had aspirations of being a gangster from a young age, and who narrates – quite transparently to the audience – his experience living life as a mobster, detailing both the highs and lows of such a lifestyle.
About a decade before becoming Tony Soprano’s therapist, Lorraine Bracco shines as Hill’s wife, Karen, while Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci also excel in their roles as brutal gangsters (the latter winning a well-deserved Oscar for his terrifying performance). Goodfellas has got everything a gangster film could need, and more than 30 years on from release, it still stands as the highlight both of Scorsese’s work as a director, and of De Niro’s acting career.
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