SATCHMO

People want to see Deniro play the tough guy gangster. He sells. That doesn't mean there aren't other actors that coud do 2/3rds of his roles justice. I'm Not saying he's a bad actor, just that he's not very versatile at all. Even if you stick him in a comedy he's still playing Robert DeNiro...in a comedy...yay. Taxi Driver was a long ****ing time ago. People need to get over it.

Captain Awesome

i don't really understand what you're trying to say. You could switch his name with the name of any actor in that sentence.

He's the same person (****in duh) but he plays different characters well. What similarity is their between the characters he portrays in meet the fockers, raging bull, hide and seek and goodfellas? aside from the fact he's still him. Which is like saying an orange is an orange that makes it a bad fruit.

and name me an actor who could have played any of his parts as well as he did? al pacino? he can suck an egg. He's great, one of the best. But he couldn't have played de niros part in raging bull or hide & seek or even meet the fockers.

de niro is an icnredibly versatile actor. Just because the majority of the parts he plays is the tough guy/gangster role doesn't mean he's not versatile. He's proven he can play completely different characters with the movies i mentioned.

Anyway, if something isn't broken, don't fix it. Like i said, nobody could play his roles better than he could.


"Anthony Hopkins" - starred in one decent movie and he's one of the best actors ever? The guys living off hannibal lector. What else has he done to deserve that kind of status? beowulf? that movie was trash.

__________________

"If we're all merely players in a play on this great stage,
the problem is the script writers ain't on the same page,
I echo through the mountain when I'm singing in the air,
from my lab a lad with lavish lyrics living in his lair."


"Wake up and listen, hear what's not for the public's ears
Pinocchio poets played by profiting puppeteers"

SATCHMO

It means he's not funny.

I'll give you Raging Bull, but that's about it. I think that Pacino could have played Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver with style and finesse to spare. However, Deniro at his best couldn't even approach the role of Tony Montana in Scarface. Why? Deniro can't do ethnic roles, unless of course it's Italian American.

Deniro plays the stoic Italian American tough guy. He is a stoic Italian American. Not a big stretch from his own personae. In comedies he plays the stoic tough guy. In gangster flicks he plays the stoic tough guy gangster. Robert Deniro plays Robert Deniro. Period


notice that many of these roles are non-British period pieces, showing his character diversity, and thus his skill as an actor. Unlike Deniro an Italian American who has, to my knowledge always only played Italian Americans, Hopkins is a British actor who has played characters from a diverse range of periods, cultures, and ethnicities:

Hannibal Lecter Silence of the Lambs Oscar winner - best actor
John Quincy Adams (Amistad) Oscar nomination
Pierre Bezukhov (War and Peace)
William Bligh (The Bounty)
Count Galeazzo Ciano (Mussolini and I)
Abraham Van Helsing (Bram Stoker's Dracula)
James Stevens (The Remains of the Day) Oscar nomination
Burt Munro (The World's Fastest Indian)
Richard Nixon (Nixon) Oscar Nomination
Iago (Othello)
Pablo Picasso (Surviving Picasso)
Ptolemy I Soter (Alexander)
Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Adolf Hitler (The Bunker)
Richard the Lionheart (The Lion in Winter)
Titus Andronicus (Titus)
Frederick Treves (The Elephant Man)