So I know the Bobby side, and I know the Jake side.”Ĭathy Moriarty as Vickie LaMotta in Raging Bull. “I’ve seen him as a father, and I’ve seen him as a friend,” says Moriarty, who received a Best Supporting Actress nod for Raging Bull. When we’d drive home from set, he would get out halfway and run behind the car because he was always training!” It’s taken four decades, and two additional movies (1997’s Cop Land and 2002’s Analyze That), for her to get to know De Niro as De Niro.

“He’s probably the most disciplined person I’ve ever met. “On set, he was always in character,” the actress tells Yahoo Entertainment. (He previously received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Godfather Part II in 1975 he hasn’t received another Best Actor nomination since 1992’s Cape Fear.)Īs Vickie LaMotta, Jake’s second wife, Cathy Moriarty had a front-row seat to De Niro’s performance, and remembers being both astonished by and slightly afraid of her co-star. Writing in The New York Times, film critic Vincent Canby called LaMotta a “titanic character,” and said that De Niro gave “what may be the performance of his career.” Oscar voters agreed: De Niro won his first, and still only, Best Actor statue for the film.

When Raging Bull premiered in New York theaters on Novemfollowed by a national release on December 19 - critics knew they were seeing something special. That kind of extreme physical transformation has since been attempted by actors ranging from Christian Bale in The Machinist to Tom Hardy in Capone. He also famously transformed his body twice - first sculpting himself into a muscular young fighter, and then gaining 60 pounds to play the boxer in his later years.

Already renowned for vanishing into characters like Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle and The Deer Hunter’s Michael Vronsky, De Niro burrowed deep into LaMotta’s troubled psyche, capturing the mixture of paranoia, self-pity and anger that fueled his brief rise and long fall. (Photo: United Artists/ Courtesy: Everett Collection)įorty years ago, Robert De Niro stepped into the ring to play real-life boxer Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, and set a new bar for screen acting that Hollywood stars have sought to live up to ever since. Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull.

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