Are We Taking Robert De Niro for Granted?

In January, Robert De Niro made Academy Awards history by becoming the actor with the longest span between his first and most recent nominations—49 years since winning supporting actor for The Godfather Part II in 1975. Taking over the character of Vito Corleone from Marlon Brando, De Niro also took the torch from him, becoming the most influential actor of his generation, as well as one of the most lauded. His Best Supporting Actor nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon, his eighth as an actor, places him firmly in the Oscars pantheon: Only nine actors in the awards’ nearly 100-year history have more. And yet, as we draw closer to Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards—where, as on Oscars night, he is widely expected to lose to Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey Jr.—it feels as if De Niro’s performance in Killers has almost inexplicably been both overlooked and underanalyzed, as if voters dutifully checked the box beside his name without fully taking in the magnitude of what he accomplished.