# What is the best Robert De Niro performance of all time?

> Few actors have shaped American cinema as definitively as Robert De Niro. From Travis Bickle's mirror monologue to Jake LaMotta's brutal self-destruction, his career contains some of cinema's greatest moments — and it extends far beyond his Scorsese collaborations. Which De Niro performance is the greatest of all time?

*By YPB Team · Published April 11, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-robert-de-niro-performance-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Travis Bickle**
   The iconic, unraveling Vietnam veteran-turned-vigilante whose 'You talkin' to me?' became cinema's most quoted line in Taxi Driver (1976).
2. **Jake LaMotta**
   The self-destructive heavyweight boxer portrayed with terrifying physicality — including a 60-pound weight gain — in Raging Bull (1980), earning De Niro an Oscar.
3. **Young Vito Corleone**
   The Corleone patriarch's immigrant rise to power in 1920s New York in The Godfather Part II (1974), earning De Niro his first Oscar.
4. **Rupert Pupkin**
   A delusional aspiring comedian who kidnaps a talk show host to land his big break in The King of Comedy (1982).
5. **Jimmy Conway**
   The charming, volatile wiseguy ringleader whose warmth masks a terrifying willingness for murder in Goodfellas (1990).
6. **Michael Vronsky**
   A working-class steelworker whose bonds of friendship are shattered by the horrors of Vietnam in The Deer Hunter (1978).
7. **Neil McCauley**
   A calculating master thief unable to walk away from one last score, facing off against Al Pacino's detective in Heat (1995).
8. **Sam Rothstein**
   A meticulous mob-connected casino operator whose empire is undone by greed and a volatile wife in Casino (1995).
9. **Al Capone**
   A flamboyantly menacing take on the Chicago mob boss, terrifying in a baseball bat scene for the ages in The Untouchables (1987).
10. **Frank Sheeran**
   An aging hitman recounting his decades of mob work including the alleged murder of Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman (2019).
11. **Max Cady**
   An ex-convict seeking terrifying revenge on the lawyer he blames for his imprisonment in Cape Fear (1991).
12. **Johnny Boy**
   A reckless, self-destructive young hood whose unpaid debts put his friends in danger in Mean Streets (1973).
13. **Lorenzo Anello**
   A principled Bronx bus driver trying to save his son from a charismatic mobster's influence in A Bronx Tale (1993), a film De Niro also directed.
14. **Jack Walsh**
   A wisecracking bounty hunter trying to transport a bail jumper cross-country in the legendary buddy comedy Midnight Run (1988).
15. **Pat Solitano Sr.**
   A superstitious Philadelphia Eagles fan navigating his son's complicated road to recovery in Silver Linings Playbook (2012).
16. **Young Noodles**
   A Jewish gangster in 1920s New York in the epic decades-spanning crime saga Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

Tags: movies, actors, classics, performances