Usually, the main problem associated with unauthorized biographies of famous people, is that the author of the work has a specific agenda that he is trying to convey of that person. However, John Baxter's biography of the both enigmatic and iconic actor Robert De Niro gives an almost completely unbiased approach to his life and craft. His book also serves as more than just a biography of a popular actor, but a thorough account of the people, events, and history that shaped the American film landscape of the second half of the previous century.
Born in New York to artists, Robert had little interest in acting until the moment he mentioned to a friend of his, after seeing a film, that he "wanted to do that." As a teen and young adult he did his rounds in New York with many other actors and film makers, like Scorsese, De Palma, Pacino and Keitel. He did his share of plays and small films. Being a student of Stella Adler, De Niro believes in the supremacy of the character, over the Strasberg approach of bringing personal items to one's performance. He would so wrap himself in his characters that people who worked with him would have no idea who the real De Niro was on set. He would appear aloof if he appeared at all between takes. While he may not be classically trained as an actor, as Kenneth Branagh would report from the set of Frankenstein, no one worked harder. He believes that he needs to earn the right to play the character. For The Deer Hunter, he spent months in a Pennsylvania coal mining town. For Raging Bull, he put on 40 pounds and fought 500 exposition rounds of boxing. For The Godfather Part II (he read for Michael in Part I) he traveled to Sicily and picked up the dialect.
He was so enveloped in his approach that equally as idiosyncratic artists, like Martin Scorsese, would immediately be drawn to him. There is little doubt that the 1976 film Taxi Driver cemented De Niro and the other sons of New York on the Hollywood landscape. Jodi Foster, then 14, remembered rehearsing and rehearsing the pivotal diner scene with him. She admitted that she was at the point of boredom, she had done it so many times. That is when she got the epiphany that that is precisely what needed to be done to do a scene as well as De Niro.
No accurate biography is completely lauding and Baxter addresses De Niro's failures on and off screen. He has had his flops, (Cannonball Run, The King of Comedy, Rocky and Bullwinkle,) and for a time he was billed as the most successful unprofitable actor in Hollywood. From what Baxter could glean from his tight lipped approach to his personal life, it has been a rocky one. Moving from one unsuccessful relationship to another, Baxter also alludes to the fact that he was doing cocaine with Robin Williams and John Belushi the night he died in Bungalow 3 at the Chateau Marmont.
The only shortcoming of this book is perhaps the largest puzzle of all. Mentioned early, Baxter claims that the reason why De Niro is such a good actor is that he garnered the impetuous from his father. Not that Robert De Niro Sr. openly embraced his son's profession, but that De Niro Jr. was driven to the world of make-believe as a youth to pretend that his father was normal. An unsuccessful painter, De Niro Sr. spent some time in a few artist communes in upstate New York and Baxter conjects he had various "intimate" relationships with other male artists. Baxter also suggests that it was his own father's failures that drove Robert De Niro Jr. to work harder to become successful.
De Niro: A Biography contends that this man, so unassuming in real life, is able to captivate his audience with his pure and unadulterated gravitas. Seeing how he has been on the A+ list for over 40 years and many of his films are already considered classics, it is not hard to see that this assertion is true.
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