With awards season upon us, it’s a little odd that the latest Martin Scorsese film, Silence, has been largely absent from the conversation, particularly in the acting categories. While it took Scorsese until 2007 to win his own Oscar, actors in Scorsese movie have routinely been up for hardware, starting with Ellen Burstyn in 1975 for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Just try to make a list of iconic film performances that doesn’t include any Scorsese movies. It’s basically impossible.
You know what else is basically impossible? Determining the best performance in a Scorsese film. But that didn’t stop me from making an attempt. After a deep investigation into Scorsese’s filmography, I determined that there were exactly 32 performances worthy of being ranked in a list on the internet. Here are those 32 performances.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Issey Ogata in Silence
Scorsese’s latest movie is undermined, for me, by Andrew Garfield, a guy who was great in The Social Network when he used the phrase “f*ck you flip-flops” but can’t quite pull off the endless amount of angry praying that Scorsese requires. (Quick fix for an alternate dimension: Have Garfield and Adam Driver trade roles.) But Silence does have many fine supporting performances, starting with Issey Ogata’s wily, borderline comic rendition as the merciless inquisitor.
Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street
The other great buck-toothed performance in the Scorsese canon.
Matt Damon in The Departed
Damon is a good actor when he plays heroes in movies like The Martian. He’s a great actor when he plays weasels in movies like The Departed.
Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator
Leo starts this movie like he’s in The Wolf of Wall Street and ends it like he’s in The Revenant.
Nicolas Cage in Bringing Out The Dead
One of the great “bonkers” Nic Cage performances, back when he was called on to act bonkers in prestige movies rather than straight-to-video B pictures.
Griffin Dunne in After Hours
Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear
She makes the list for starring in the most disturbing thumb-sucking scene in film history
Matthew McConaughey and Kyle Chandler in The Wolf of Wall Street
Both of them dropped into The Wolf of Wall Street for basically one scene each, but they’re the two best scenes in the movie.
Van Morrison in The Last Waltz
The purple suit is immortal.
Martin Scorsese in Taxi Driver
Not just a great cameo, but a fine showcase for one of the classic ’70s beards of all time.
THE TOP 20
20. Tom Cruise in The Color Of Money
For Cruise, already one of Hollywood’s biggest stars when he made The Color of Money in the mid-’80s, working with Scorsese was an education. “As I was doing Top Gun, I was thinking I’d really like to work with an established older actor whom I can learn from – and an established director,” Cruise told Cameron Crowe in 1986. “Then Marty [Scorsese] called me and said he wanted me to read the script for The Color of Money.” For Scorsese, Cruise was a dry run for his working relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio, another one-time teen idol eager to prove himself to the old master. The Cruise/Scorsese union was mutually beneficial: Cruise made Scorsese mainstream, and Scorsese showed Cruise could act — though Scorsese was also smart enough to take a cue from Risky Business and have Cruise shake his backside to a classic-rock oldie.
19. Nick Nolte in Cape Fear
Ostensibly a remake of a classic ’60s potboiler starring Robert Mitchum, Scorsese’s Cape Fear feels more like a hybrid of Alfred Hitchcock (by way of old running buddy Brian De Palma) and the emotionally fraught family dramas of John Cassavetes, a pivotal influence for Scorsese going back to his days at NYU. Robert De Niro’s bombastic bad guy Max Cady is what people tend to remember about Cape Fear, but Nick Nolte’s performance as a deeply flawed attorney, husband and father is perhaps the most underrated in the Scorsese canon. Inside Nolte’s cut-from-granite dome swirls enough sin and guilt to justify Scorsese’s allusions to Job.
18. Sandra Bernhard in The King of Comedy
The pivotal scene in The King Of Comedy between Jerry Lewis, who plays talk show host Jerry Langford, and Bernhard, who plays his stalker, occurs near the end of the movie when Bernhard holds Lewis captive with his arms and legs wrapped in packing tape. Bernhard starts to “romantically” serenade Lewis, though since this is a Scorsese movie, the threat of violence also hangs in the air. In real life, Lewis didn’t know ahead of time what Bernhard was going to do — it was her job to make Lewis feel supremely uncomfortable, and she succeeded. “She’s the reason they invented birth control!” Lewis declared in 2013, in extremely Jerry Lewis fashion.
17. Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Every time a new Scorsese film comes out, someone writes a thinkpiece about how he never makes films about strong women. This accusation has haunted Scorsese since the beginning of his career, when he established himself as a critical favorite with 1973’s dude-heavy masterpiece, Mean Streets. For his next film, 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Scorsese teamed up with Ellen Burstyn for one of the era’s defining female character studies. As Alice, Burstyn expertly depicts an indomitable survivor who balances motherhood with dreams of being singer while enduring the sort of combustible men that always populate Scorsese’s films. (It’s kind of like Mean Streets if it had been told from the point of view of Amy Robinson’s character.) Burstyn gets bonus points for also enduring young Alfred Lutter, who gives one of the most irritating child-actor performances in cinema history as Burstyn’s adolescent son.
16. Catherine O’Hara in After Hours
Of all the menacing characters that have appeared in Scorsese films, one of the scariest for me is Gail, a flakey truck driver who winds up heading up a lynch mob in search of a beleaguered Griffin Dunne in After Hours. Scorsese has routinely used comic actors in dramatic roles throughout his career — Don Rickles in Casino and Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street being two other notable examples. But O’Hara, SCTV veteran and Kevin McAllister’s mom in Home Alone, stands alone in a part that could’ve been comedic had O’Hara gone just a smidgen broader. As is, O’Hara is the quirkily banal face of an uncaring city that can drive you crazy in a million small ways, like when she makes it impossible for Dunne to remember an important phone number.
15. Harvey Keitel in Taxi Driver
Keitel’s screen time in Taxi Driver hovers around 10 minutes, but he makes those minutes count with one of the skeeziest character performances in any Scorsese film. Like any self-respecting Method actor, Keitel sought out real pimps that he could study for the role, approaching a prostitute on Tenth Avenue near where he was appearing in a Broadway show at the time. “I said, ‘I’m looking for someone to help me to understand what it’s like to be a pimp’ and I’m talking … and she doesn’t say a word,” Keitel said in 2016. “I said, ‘Could you help me out?’ And she looks at me and goes, ‘No one’s going to talk to you.’ So, I sulked away.” With his fedora, stringy hair, and white undershirt, Keitel looks like unfrozen caveman slimeball — part camp, part authentic, and all evil.
14. Cate Blanchett in The Aviator
Blanchett won her first Oscar for playing Katharine Hepburn, who won four Oscars of her own. But Blanchett’s performance in The Aviator wasn’t mere Oscar bait. She inhabits Hepburn the person and the persona, playing her as a plucky, progressive, everywoman heroine from a Katharine Hepburn movie. When Hepburn jousts verbally with DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes, it’s like watching the real Hepburn match wits with Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart.
13. Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas (tie)
Whether at The Copa, on the lam in witness protection, or on this list, you just can’t separate Henry and Karen Hill. Scorsese isn’t known for portraying strong male/female relationships in his films, so these two crazy kids — she has eyes like Liz Taylor, he thinks he’s Frankie Valli or some kind of big shot — will have to do as a model marriage in Scorsese’s world. Liotta and Bracco are so good at subtly conveying the shifting nature of the Hills’ union, as it devolves from a romantic courtship marred by the occasional pistol-whipping to a full-on cocaine nightmare, that you really feel like you’re watching scenes from a real (albeit heavily armed) marriage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4vuCfuFjDI
12. Robert De Niro in Raging Bull
Here we go — the first knock-down, drag-out fight of this list. How can I put De Niro’s immortal performance as Jake La Motta just outside the top 10? Well, for starters, there are three other De Niro performances in Scorsese films that I like more. De Niro’s La Motta is obviously impressive, but the mythology surrounding De Niro’s preparation for the role has somewhat overshadowed the actual performance. De Niro in his prime was always obsessed with the process of acting, but he never showed his work to to the degree that he does in Raging Bull. You’re never not aware of how hard De Niro is acting. All of that that said — man, De Niro really is powerful in this movie, especially in the “fat” La Motta sections, when the former champ is reduced to a two-bit comic and Marlon Brando tribute artist.
11. Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro in Mean Streets (tie)
In Keitel, Scorsese found his on-screen surrogate — Keitel is all fast-talking nervousness and Catholic guilt in Mean Streets. In De Niro, Scorsese discovered his ideal collaborator, so it’s no surprise that De Niro and Scorsese’s twin locked into each other in Mean Streets like a classic comedy team, a kind of streetwise Martin and Lewis who ping-pong off each other about the etiquette of properly paying off gambling debts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn1oBVyytlQ
10. Sharon Stone in Casino
Ginger McKenna is the original crazy ex-girlfriend — the genius of Stone’s performance in Casino is how she makes Ginger seem sexier even as Scorsese makes her less and less sympathetic. She’s like a black hole of seduction, eventually bringing both De Niro and Joe Pesci, the toughest guys in the Scorseseverse, to their knees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvmGHb2zO-U
9. Mark Wahlberg in The Departed
Before The Departed, Wahlberg had played sensitive dummies (Boogie Nights), self-aware dummies (I Heart Huckabees), and dumb dummies (pretty much every other Mark Wahlberg movie). But under Scorsese’s tutelage, Wahlberg finally got to be the savviest dummy in the room. Whether he’s philosophizing about the Iraqi Navy, insulting his own mother, or dismissing your snooty allusion to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Wahlberg in The Departed is a fountain of quotable vulgarity and a pillar of nonchalant assholery.
8. Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York
It’s possible that I’m overrating this performance because it only seems towering in comparison to DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, who were grossly miscast in this infamous, highly expensive mess. I also have outsized respect for anyone who can deliver monologues in an inscrutable, 19th century Noo Yawk accent while also gutting a pig. But come on, no matter the shortcomings of Gangs of New York, you can’t deny Bill The Butcher. At some point, you must admit defeat in the face of Daniel Day Lewis, and give the man his bloody, hard-earned props. He’s an honorable man.
7. Paul Newman in The Color of Money
When Paul Newman won his only Oscar for reprising his role as “Fast” Eddie Felson in The Color of Money, it was considered by many to be a consolation prize for the Academy overlooking Newman in worthier films. But 31 years later, The Color of Money endures as one of Newman’s most rewatchable movies. As an older, wilier “Fast” Eddie, Newman got to play the rarest of Scorsese characters — a guy who actually seems wise at the start of the movie. Newman in this movie is nothing less than a sage. “You know when to say ‘Yes,’ when to say ‘No,’ and everybody goes home in a limousine” — few pieces of advice are more valuable than that.
6. Joe Pesci in Goodfellas
“You think I’m funny?” is the money shot, but I actually prefer the “Pow! Ping! Poo!” stuff before it. Everything else about the greatness of this performance is self-explanatory.
5. Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy
Jerry Lewis supposedly didn’t understand the praise he received for his rare dramatic turn in The King of Comedy — he thought he was just playing himself. If that’s true, Lewis’ portrayal of an embittered show-biz titan in The King of Comedy still ranks among the most indelible in the Scorsese canon. That so much of the film feels like a documentary — particularly the scenes in which Lewis eats by himself in his antiseptic apartment lined with televisions on mute — makes the film’s critique of celebrity culture all the more penetrating and prescient. (It also grounds the film’s flights of psychotic fancy whenever Rupert Pupkin is on-screen.)
4. Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver
This is the best performance ever by a child actor, and it will probably never be topped, because it’s unlikely that a film in which a 12-year-old prostitute speaks as frankly as Jodie Foster does in Taxi Driver gets made outside of ’70s Hollywood. Beyond the shock value of the material, however, is a unique, fully realized character that Foster played a major role in creating. “As a kid, I thought it would be a job like all the others, but when I got there, I realized it was creating a character from scratch, which I’d never done before,” Foster said last year. “It was eye-opening for me.” Foster’s performance as Iris is still eye-opening more than 40 years later.
3. Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy
Scorsese has said that De Niro’s performance as hacky sociopathic comic Rupert Pupkin is the greatest of his long-time partner’s career. It’s definitely the most layered performance De Niro ever gave in a Scorsese film. As Rupert Pupkin, De Niro manages to revive the alienated Travis Bickle archetype and infuse it with even more desperation and surprisingly not-terrible comic timing. (Rupert Pupkin isn’t untalented; De Niro aims to make him seem believably mediocre.) When Rupert shows up at the bar where his high school crush works, and turns on the TV in order to show off how he’s blackmailed a TV network into putting him on the air, the look on De Niro’s face is smug, sad, defiant, proud, and more than a little insane. It’s no wonder that fans of The King of Comedy still debate the veracity of the film’s ending all these years later.
2. Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street
This is Leo trying to out-do everybody else who’s ever made a Scorsese movie. He yells, growls, grunts, sniffs, and does the robot with maximum abandon. While Jake La Motta is painful to look at by the end of Raging Bull, Jordan Belfort demands your attention even as he desecrates everything in his orbit. De Niro insisted that he wasn’t an animal, whereas DiCaprio gleefully transforms himself into the worst possible animal. All the while you can feel DiCaprio’s overwhelming drive to be great; he melds his outsized ambition with Jordan Belfort’s until they are one in the same. You might find it boorish, and I can’t say I disagree. I just happen to find it boorish in the most thrilling possible sense.
1. Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver
Let me be up front with my biases here: This is my favorite performance by anybody in any film ever. As far as I’m concerned, De Niro as Travis Bickle is the closest that any actor has gotten to accurately depicting a person’s inner life in a movie. I’m sure this impression is related to my affinity for the Travis Bickle character — like Scorsese, De Niro, and Paul Schrader in the mid-’70s, I have related to the non-assassination/porn theater-dwelling aspects of Travis intensely during the loneliest stretches of my life. Most lonely people don’t go on murderous rampages, but we have listened forlornly to Jackson Browne or gone on super awkward dates with beautiful people who could barely stand to look at us.
This empathy for Travis is, in the parlance of our times, problematic, I suppose. After all, Travis is a racist psycho who tries to kill a presidential candidate. But the ambiguity of Taxi Driver, and the unparalleled sensitivity of De Niro’s performance, is also what keeps the film so fresh. The irony of the famous “You talkin’ to me?” scene is that hardly anybody wants to talk to Travis Bickle, and De Niro is able to play the fury of that rejection without overwhelming Travis’ sorrow. The result is the most relatable crazed loner you’ll ever encounter.
