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When De Niro was offered a supporting role in Scorsese’s 1973 film “Mean Streets,” he wasn’t sure if he should take it. One chance encounter with his future co-star made him reconsider, the actor told Interview in 2012:
“I remember when I was up for ‘Mean Streets,’ I ran into Harvey Keitel in the Village — we were friends — and he’d already been cast in the movie as Charlie. I had done a couple of leads in movies before so I said, ‘Well, careerwise, I should be playing Charlie.’ I didn’t say it like a wiseass. I was saying it sincerely, but not in a way that was threatening to him. Then Harvey said, ‘You knew who you should play? Johnny Boy.’ And that clicked. I played Johnny.”
The actor had previously starred Brian De Palma’s film “Hi Mom!,” but he admits it was cocky to turn up his nose at a supporting role in “Mean Streets.” “As an actor who’s starting out, you can’t say, ‘Hey, I’m too good for this,'” he explained. “You gotta do it, because people see you, your name gets around, and it has a cumulative effect.”
It was through “Mean Streets” that De Niro and Scorsese’s relationship evolved from acquaintances to coworkers to life-long friends. “[W]e became grown-up friends. Today, we are good friends and best friends when we work together,” the actor shared with The Baltimore Sun.
Without Keitel guiding De Niro in the right direction, he may have missed out on starring roles in “Taxi Driver,” “Goodfellas,” and a handful of other incredible Scorsese films. More importantly, audiences would have been deprived of De Niro’s incredible performances. Scorsese, Keitel, and De Niro launched their monumental careers together, and they couldn’t have done it without each other.
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