Martin Scorsese AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list. Scorsese has often said he thinks De Niro's best work under his direction was Rupert Pupkin in "The King of Comedy". After the turn of the century, Scorsese found a new muse with younger actor Leonardo DiCaprio, collaborating for five feature films to date, along with one short. Several critics have compared Scorsese's new partnership with DiCaprio with his previous one with De Niro. Frequent collaborators also include Victor Argo (6), Harry Northup (6), Harvey Keitel (5), Murray Moston (5), J. C. MacKenzie (3), Joe Pesci (3), Frank Vincent (3) and Verna Bloom (3).
The Gambler (1974 film) New York and had a gambling problem. He originally wrote "The Gambler" as a semi-autobiographical novel but halfway through started envisioning it as a film and turned it into a screenplay. Toback completed it in 1972 and showed it to his friend Lucy Saroyan, who introduced Toback to Robert De Niro. Toback became enthused about the possibility of De Niro playing the lead. He showed the script to his literary agent who gave it to Mike Medavoy who attached director Karel Reisz. Reisz did not want to use De Niro and cast James Caan instead. "Caan became a great Axel