ROBERT DE NIRO

You talkin' to me? Visual biographies of cinema's greatest stars Most moviegoers associate actor Robert De Niro with adjectives like"intense," "violent," "streetwise," and "brooding." It is an image that DeNiro has carefully nurtured over the last fifty years of his career. Heused gesture, voice, and, most importantly, his mesmerizing eyes to conveyto the audience the disturbing emotions with which he imbued hischaracters, from his earliest films like Mean Streets through classicportraits of violent, disaffected men like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver andJake La Motta in Raging Bull up to and including comic tour de forces likethe maniacal father in Meet the Parents. De Niro's journey from alienatedteen through conflicted stardom and finally to committed activist againreplicates the trajectory of many of his characters, who also travel fromthe depths of despair to some form of redemption, no matter howunconventional. For in De Niro's world, art and reality are oftenindistinguishable.