'I Can't Do Any Worse Than Them': The Moment Robert De Niro Decided To Become An Actor

Robert De Niro is frequently cited as being one of the best male actors of all time — he's one of the greatest of the last several decades, anyway. After getting his start in the 1960s, the actor's meteoric rise truly began in the '70s, during which time De Niro starred in such iconic films as "Taxi Driver" (which was written in just 10 days!), "New York, New York," and "The Godfather Part II." That said, the New Yorker didn't originally want to become an actor because De Niro had aspirations of being one of the greatest of all time. Rather, it was because he figured that getting into showbusiness couldn't be that hard, given the quality of the performances he watched on TV growing up.

The Oscar winner opened up about the moment he decided to become an actor during an interview with The New York Times Magazine, in November 2012. "When I was around 18. I was looking at a TV show — a soap opera or some weekly western — and I said if these actors are making a living at it, and they're not really that good, I can't do any worse than them," he explained. After De Niro started pursuing acting in earnest, he realized there was an entire world out there beyond the realm of bad television — which, as we know now, De Niro went on to dominate. In his own words, however, "That it wasn't what I thought when I was younger. But I remember saying that to myself, watching those black-and-white TV shows. [...] [That I could do] better than what I was seeing." Given that De Niro won his first Oscar at the age of 31, clearly, he was onto something.

Of course, believing that you could be a serviceable actor and actually doing it are two very different things. Fortunately, Robert De Niro wasted little time walking the walk following that fateful moment at age 18. His first onscreen appearance was an uncredited role in the film "Three Rooms in Manhattan," which was released in 1965, when he was 22 years old. However, to get more technical, De Niro's first ever movie role was in "The Wedding Party," which was shot in 1963, but didn't actually come out until 1969. As previously mentioned, the Oscar winner's career really took off in the '70s. And while the actor is perhaps best known for his collaborations with director Martin Scorsese, it was actually a Francis Ford Coppola movie that earned De Niro his first Academy Award. 

The actor portrayed a young Vito Corleone in 1974's "The Godfather Part II," and took home the Academy Award for best supporting actor the following year. De Niro's 1975 triumph made Oscars history, as he became the first male actor to win for performing primarily in a non-English language. He later added a second Oscar to his shelf, winning best actor for Scorsese's "Raging Bull" in 1981. Though a third Academy Award has eluded him, De Niro continued to star in beloved films as the decades progressed, from "The King of Comedy" in the '80s, to "Goodfellas" in the '90s, and "Meet the Parents" in the 2000s. Ironically, given what made him want to try his hand at acting in the first place, De Niro largely avoided the small screen for the majority of his career. But he did eventually star in a scripted TV series in the form of the 2025 Netflix drama "Zero Day."