Is Robert DeNiro the Actor Who Best Defines the Post-JFK America?
farther apart. For such a young and unknown actor attempting to find a foothold in the public’s consciousness, such a rejection of a easy identification with the audience seems almost as crazy as Johnny Boy himself. And if, in retrospect, DeNiro as a crazy New York gangster wannabe does not seem like a terribly big stretch, even today DeNiro’s complete immersion as a slow-witted Georgia baseball player still has the power to amaze. DeNiro has become legendary for the steps he takes to prepare for a role, and those steps have been adopted by actors ever since. At the time, it was not conventional preparation for DeNiro to drive down to Georgia to locals speaking so that he could acquire not just some vague Southern or even Georgia accent, but the accent from a specific spot. The result is arguably the least classically “DeNiro character” in his entire body of work. The jump from Bruce Pearson to Johnny Boy is an example of the manner in which the search for identity became omnipresent i
