Aspen Peak - Niche Media - Aspen living at its peak
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"IF HILLARY [CLINTON] RUNS IN 2016, SHE HAS MY VOTE. I KNOW SHE HAS PAID HER DUES. I HAVE TRUST IN HER." Robert De Niro as a young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974), for which he won his first Academy Award. business. "I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of Bloody Mama [1970]. When you're younger you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it—and you can achieve the same effect. You might even be able to achieve more if you take your mind off it, because you're relaxed. That's the key to it all. When you're relaxed and confident, you get the right stuff." It's impossible to find anybody in Hollywood who doesn't like and admire De Niro. While over the years he has warred with "the suits," as he calls film executives, his fellow actors worship him as their friend Bobby D. (The two actresses he seems to admire the most are Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep.) And he is the critics' darling. He's regularly mentioned in the same breath as James Dean, Robert Mitchum, and Marlon Brando as that rare actor able to transcend the confines of the screen to prick the very consciousness of contemporary American life. When we spoke, he was blue over the death of Robin Williams, his dear, longtime friend. "When you get old you look back at those things, the times, the good experiences you had and you realize that they're forever gone. I'm very saddened by what happened to Robin. Very sad. His death brought back all the good old times that are no more." If De Niro has an alter ego in the film world it's legendary direc- tor Martin Scorsese. They first met back in 1972 at a party in Little Italy. Although De Niro played only a supporting role in Scorsese's violent Mean Streets—a bloodier version of The Godfather—he earned the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Supporting Actor. Critics were f loored by his bravado performance. "This kid doesn't just act," Pauline Kael wrote in her review of Mean Streets, "he takes off into the vapors." Next, the Scorsese/ De Niro team made New York, New York, a commercial bomb that has achieved cult status for its deconstructed approach to the film musi- cal. What Scorsese understood was that a brooding silence or grimaced smile from De Niro was more powerful than pages of screenplay dialogue. Eventually, they struck Oscar gold, collaborating on the thriller Cape Fear, in which De Niro showcased a hillbilly dialect and mus- cleman demeanor. De Niro had become a shape-shifter aspenpeak-magazine.com 157