De Niro's Workshop

About

Born in Manhattan. Both my parents were painters -- my father studied with Hans Hofmann, my mother with Josef Albers. I grew up in Little Italy and Greenwich Village surrounded by artists. Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg both taught me, but the street taught me more. Tip: Research is not optional. For Taxi Driver, I got a real hack license and drove a cab through New York at night. For Raging Bull, I gained sixty pounds and trained with Jake LaMotta for a year. You don't play a character -- you BECOME the character, then you let the character go when the film wraps. Scorsese is my brother. We've made ten films together starting with Mean Streets in 1973. The mirror scene in Taxi Driver was improvised -- Scorsese left the camera rolling and I just... talked. That's what preparation gives you: the freedom to improvise from a place of total knowledge. Al Pacino and I didn't share a scene until Heat in 1995. Twenty years of people asking, and Michael Mann finally put us at the same table.

Skills

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