De Niro: A Biography - Hardcover

The life of Hollywood’s number one movie actor, the elusive Robert De Niro, who shuns the limelight and rarely gives interviews, written by the leading film critic and biographer of Spielberg, Kubrick, Woody Allen and George Lucas.

Robert De Niro is the pre-eminent Hollywood character performer of our time: film portraits like the young Don Vito Corleone in THE GODFATHER II, Jake La Motta in RAGING BULL and Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER are some of the most vivid ever put on celluloid. De Niro cannot be cast to type, prefers to work for old friends like Martin Scorsese, and (apart from FRANKENSTEIN) has never played anything but 20th-century roles.

John Baxter calls him ‘the archetypal empty bottle which only becomes visible when it’s filled by a role’: which makes him such a tempting subject for one of Hollywood’s finest historian/biographers.

The author discusses De Niro’s film roles as well as his often controversial private life.

Robert De Niro is the greatest screen actor of our time: film portraits like the young Don Vito Corleone in 'The Godfather II', Travis Bickle in 'Taxi Driver' and Jake La Motta in 'Raging Bull' are among the most vivid and intense ever committed to celluloid. He is famously perfectionist, and the lengths to which he will go to create his roles – to 'earn the right' to play them – have become legendary. Yet in his personal life De Niro has always shunned the limelight, and he rarely gives interviews.

Based on scrupulous research and conversations with friends and colleagues of De Niro, this new biography provides the first full portrait of the actor John Baxter calls 'the archetypical empty bottle which only becomes visible when it's filled by a role'. As well as his film roles, Baxter examines De Niro's often controversial private life, his fruitful collaborations with directors like Martin Scorcese and performers like Harvey Keitel and Meryl Streep, and the ambitious off-screen activities which have increasingly preoccupied him in recent years.

'De Niro: A Biography' is a fascinating insight into the American film industry and a revealing portrait of a remarkable actor.