De Niro: a biography

Description

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. As well as his film roles, Baxter examines De Niro's often controversial private life, his collaborations with directors like Martin Scorsese and performers like Harvey Keitel and Meryl Streep, and his increasingly ambitious off-screen activities. 1 The Last Actor Alive 1 -- 2 New York 6 -- 3 My Father's Business 21 -- 4 Stella 39 -- 5 Sally, Candy, Andy and the Others 50 -- 6 Shelley and the Boys 62 -- 7 The Year of the Turkey 77 -- 8 Boyz of the 'Hood 93 -- 9 An Offer You Can't Refuse 109 -- 10 Sleepless 130 -- 11 If You Can Make it There ... 145 -- 12 Going for a Soldier 169 -- 13 Jake 185 -- 14 A Harp with Class 203 -- 15 The Epic that Never Was 227 -- 16 The South American Picture 241 -- 17 Falling Angel 254 -- 18 The Man Upstairs 277 -- 19 A Made Man 295 -- 20 Rabbit in a Maze 313 -- 21 In Cop Land 329 -- 22 Ageing Bull 348.