The Essentials: 16 Great Robert De Niro Performances

For the past four-and-a-half decades, American acting legend Robert De Niro has been stunning, surprising, scaring, and charming audiences across the world through a plethora of unforgettable performances. Beginning in the mid-70s, it took a couple of pictures with a couple of brilliant up-and-coming New Hollywood directors for a young De Niro to explode into the zeitgeist, but once he did he remained there as one of the most prominent figures of film culture. Today, he's closing in on a hundred feature roles, and his name is often mentioned alongside the likes of Marlon Brando as not only one of the most influential actors of his generation, but simply one of the greatest ever. He has done for gangsters what Laurence Olivier did for Shakespeare on screen, and together with life-long friend and fellow New Yorker Martin Scorsese, is responsible for one of the greatest director-actor collaborations in the history of cinema. While his 21st century...