Mafia film film with Pesci earning an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards in all, including Best Picture and Best Director, making "Goodfellas" one of the most critically acclaimed crime films of all time. Following their collaboration in "Goodfellas", Scorsese, De Niro and Pesci would team up again in 1995 with the film "Casino", based on Frank Rosenthal, an associate of the Chicago Outfit who ran multiple casinos in Las Vegas during the 1970s and 1980s. The film was De Niro's third mob film of the decade, following "Goodfellas" (1990) and
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro Scorsese's semi-autobiographical "J. R. trilogy", which also would have included his later film, "Mean Streets". Scorsese had impressed many with the film and made friends with Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Robert Zemeckis, known as the influential "movie brats" of the 1970s. It was De Palma who introduced Scorsese to the young actor Robert De Niro. De Niro had known De Palma for several years previously, and his first film role in collaboration with De Palma materialized in 1963 at the age of 20, when he appeared in "The Wedding Party". However, the film