Robert De Niro
American actor who trained in boxing with Jake LaMotta himself for the role of the boxer LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), gained 27 kg and won the Oscar for best actor.
Quick Facts
United StatesBiography
Robert De Niro is an American actor, director and producer. He was born on 17 August 1943 in Manhattan, New York. Besides American, he also holds Italian citizenship. He is connected with the world of combat sports above all through the film Raging Bull (1980), in which he portrayed the boxer Jake LaMotta.
Jake LaMotta himself taught him to box for this role, and at the Gramercy club in New York he was assisted by the trainer Al Silvani. According to one source, he himself boxed at middleweight and won two of three bouts in a Brooklyn ring. Every boxing scene was choreographed like a dance number after Arthur Murray's dance manuals, and the director insisted that one camera stand inside the ring and capture the fighters' point of view, not the spectators'.
For the role he gained 27 kg (60 pounds), from 145 to 215 pounds, and filming stopped for about four months because of it. The scenes from the late part of LaMotta's career were shot around Christmas 1979, seven to eight weeks after the boxing ones. For his performance in Raging Bull he won the Oscar for best actor in 1981.
He had already received an Oscar in 1975 for a supporting role in The Godfather Part II (1974). In 2016 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 2019 the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
Filmography
A screen role does not mean the person actually practises the art — that is listed above.