De Niro’s thoughts on some of his most memorable films

With a career that stretches back to the 1960s, Robert De Niro has been in more than his share of memorable films and has worked with top directors — Sergio Leone, Brian De Palma, Quentin Tarantino and most particularly Martin Scorsese. Here, he shares some quick thoughts on a few of his films.

“The Deer Hunter” (1978)

“[Director] Mike Cimino sent me the script, and on the cover was a black-and-white photo of a guy leaning against a white Cadillac, a deer over the hood, holding a shotgun and ‘The Deer Hunter’ in red across it. That drew me in right there. It was so confusing the poster they eventually did — the antlers and the this and the that, and the faces of all the people — it was so busy, and this was so elegant and simple. I wondered why they didn’t use that.”

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“The King of Comedy” (1983)

“I sometimes dragged Marty around to these autograph guys, autograph hounds. They’re always on the set, so I said [to them], ‘Now we’re going to talk to you.’ So we’d go to their houses, couple times we did that. I wanted to get closer to what they were about, what drove them.”

“Midnight Run” (1988)

“It was very funny. The character [of Jack Walsh] that George Gallo wrote was very funny. There are things I remember about working with Charles Grodin — but that’s for a book — that I couldn’t say now.”

“Cape Fear” (1991)

“Steven Spielberg first brought this to me, and he didn’t want to do it, and I always wanted Marty to do it. It was hard work. I worked out; it looked like I was [bulked up], but actually I was lighter than I am now even.”

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