10 Essential Robert De Niro Performances

Everything about this classic De Niro performance is meticulous. De Niro went full method to portray Jimmy Conway, the real life gangster (Jimmy The Gent) who features in Mob rat Henry Hill's (Ray Liotta) and Nicholas Pileggi's notorious true-crime book, "Wiseguys". The actor reportedly annoyed the f*ck out of Hill, constantly calling him to get down every minute detail, asking questions as particular as how Jimmy put ice in his drink. 

This attention to detail is what makes De Niro's Conway such a memorable creation. While Liotta and Joe Pesci (hamming it up as the psychotic Tommy) are darting around the film in a craze, De Niro is more tempered, shouldering his co-stars and balancing out the mania a bit. (Though in classic De Niro fashion, Conway has a violent outburst of his own).

De Niro in Goodfellas is very much a performance of Little Things. Little things like the way he rolls his cigarette in his mouth, or littler still, like the way he puts ketchup on his meal, rolling the bottle between his palms. It's moments like this, as well as the flashier stuff, that make De Niro the exacting centerpiece of an undeniable classic.