Celebrating his ninth collaboration with Martin Scorsese, American actor Robert De Niro joins us to discuss his formidable career on the occasion of the international premiere of his latest film The Irishman.

The son of two Greenwich Village artists, Robert De Niro studied at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting, and following a few Off-Broadway plays, found his film career truly kicking off in 1973 with performances in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets. Director Francis Ford Coppola was so impressed that he offered the actor the part of young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II (1974), forgoing even a screen test, and De Niro's brilliant turn earned him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award and made him an international star. A run of work including Taxi Driver (1976) 1900 (1976), The Last Tycoon (1976), and The Deer Hunter (1978) meant that by the end of the 1970s, he was widely considered one of the best actors of his generation, topped by an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, which closed the London Film Festival in 1980. In a career that has seen collaborations with directors including Sergio Leone, Michael Mann, Penny Marshall, Brian De Palma, Terry Gilliam, Nancy Meyers, James Mangold, Harold Ramis, Michael Caton-Jones, David O. Russell and Tony Scott, contemporary cinema has grown with De Niro, as an actor whose talent ranges from penetrating intensity to impeccable comic timing, and whose uncompromising portrayals of violent and abrasive characters have helped define masculinity onscreen.

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