ROBERT DE NIRO

And then, in the blink of an eye, I saw him. He was one man among the millions of ordinary pedestrians swarming about the residential districts of southern Manhattan, but he had that proverbial magnetism that radiated from his unmistakable figure on the silver screen. RobertDe Niro, talking on a street corner. I was stupefied. It was him, the loony taxi driver who accumulated a diabolical arsenal to protect a teenage prostitute and to challenge the world with his ballistic strategies; the young and dashing godfather Vito Corleone, who took advantage of the fleeting opportunity offered by a parade in lower Manhattan to shoot at point-blank range at one of the self-proclaimed kings of the neighborhood and then went home with a shiny apple for his son; De Niro, the overweight boxer who gained God knows how many pounds to play the part of heavy weight champion Jack LaMotta; De Niro, the noble missionary who defended the Brazilian natives against their own government’s unjust war of extermination. De Niro, the hero with charismain spades; the villain of unbridled cruelty; the leading man who takes away the breath of every woman in the world; the idealist Mafioso, the simple martyr. Robert De Niro, the figure at the top of the very short list of men I admire in this life.