Yet at the time, this one-two punch wasn’t necessarily regarded as a triumph. Just a few weeks later, he shared the screen with fellow acting titan Al Pacino for the first time in Heat, Michael Mann’s cops-and-robbers epic. In November, he reunited with his frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese for Casino, a companion piece of sorts to their 1990 masterpiece Goodfellas. Twenty-five years ago, Robert De Niro enjoyed a particularly stellar year that would change his career forever.
(Photo by Phillip Caruso/©Unversal, ©Warner Brothers/courtesy Everett Collection)