Robert De Niro has been one of the most prolific and revered actors in the world for half a century. He’s most renowned for his collaborations with Martin Scorsese. Since his breakout role as “Johnny Boy” in 1973’s Mean Streets, De Niro has given widely acclaimed performances in a grand total of nine Scorsese movies.
But Scorsese is just the tip of the iceberg. Across his storied acting career, De Niro has worked with such legendary directors as Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, and Quentin Tarantino.
David O. Russell
De Niro worked with David O. Russell a few times throughout the 2010s. He had co-starring roles alongside Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle.
Russell got his start helming dark comedies like The Fighter.
Elia Kazan
Iconic playwright Harold Pinter adapted F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon into a screenplay for director Elia Kazan. De Niro stars as a studio executive working in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
The movie received mixed reviews and ended up being Kazan’s final directorial work. Kazan’s résumé includes such untouchable masterpieces as A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden.
Brian De Palma
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, De Niro starred in a few of Brian De Palma’s early films: the draft-dodging satire Greetings, the classical farce The Wedding Party, and the dark comedy Hi, Mom!.
After De Niro and De Palma parted ways, the latter became renowned as a horror director with such blood-soaked gems as Phantom of the Paradise.
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino won the Academy Award for Best Director after directing The Deer Hunter.
Sadly, after The Deer Hunter won Best Picture and made him one of the most revered directors in the world, Cinimo’s reputation was hurt by the critical and commercial flop Heaven’s Gate.
Bernardo Bertolucci
De Niro led a star-studded international ensemble in Bernardo Bertolucci’s large-scale historical epic 1900, appearing alongside such stars as Gérard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, and Burt Lancaster.
A bunch of Bertolucci’s movies, like The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris, are considered classics of world cinema. After helming The Last Emperor, Bertolucci became the first Italian filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director.
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino is known for his recurring company of actors, including Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, who appeared in a handful of his movies. But he only ever worked with De Niro once. De Niro played Jackson’s partner-in-crime, Louis Gara, in Jackie Brown.
Arguably Tarantino’s most mature and most underappreciated film, Jackie Brown is a snappy, fast-paced crime caper adapted from Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch (making it Tarantino’s only adaptation of previous source material).
Francis Ford Coppola
After the phenomenal success of the first The Godfather Part II. De Niro took the role of Vito from Marlon Brando and followed in his footsteps to win an Oscar for it.
Coppola is arguably the only director in Hollywood with the distinction of having directed four of the greatest movies of all time in a row: The Godfather, Apocalypse Now.
Michael Mann
Michael Mann’s slick, sprawling, L.A.-set neo-noir The Dark Knight. It also paired up De Niro with fellow screen legend Al Pacino for the first time ever. The cat-and-mouse thriller stars De Niro as a bank robber and Pacino as the cop on his trail.
Mann is renowned as one of the greatest action directors in the world, having helmed such widely celebrated thrillers as Manhunter.
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone made his name as a pioneer of the spaghetti western genre with his Dollars trilogy and Once Upon a Time in America. De Niro stars as gangster David “Noodles” Aaronson.
While it’s a perfectly fine crime epic with some breathtaking moments, Once Upon a Time in America pales in comparison to Leone’s leaner, rougher spaghetti westerns.
Martin Scorsese
De Niro’s most famous working relationship with a director is, of course, with Martin Scorsese. Since getting his big break in the role of The Irishman.
After nine movies, De Niro and Scorsese still aren’t done. De Niro is set to star alongside Scorsese’s other go-to leading man, Leonardo DiCaprio, in his historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon.
