Robert De Niro’s preparation for role in The Godfather Part II revealed by major study of his screenplays
He is one of Hollywood’s greatest actors, who famously spent months learning the Sicilian dialect to play the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II. Now the extent to which Robert De Niro prepared every last detail in taking on the Sicilian gangster-patriarch first portrayed by Marlon Brando has been revealed by a major study of his screenplays.
De Niro’s notes for the 1974 film, for which he received an Oscar, reveal how he built up the character’s sinister steeliness, scribbling down shorthand instructions to himself: “NEVER let people know what really thinking. Especially what feel.”
Having repeatedly watched Brando’s 1972 depiction of the Mafia boss in The Godfather – the first part of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterful trilogy – De Niro explored precisely how he would depict the same character as a younger man, telling himself: “Be more still and listen. I’m a listener I don’t move and do a lot, especially after kill [gangster] Fanucci…
