The King of Comedy (film) without fists". She went on to write that "De Niro in disguise denies his characters a soul. De Niro's 'bravura' acting in "Mean Streets, Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York" collapsed into 'anti-acting' after he started turning himself into repugnant flesh eggies of soulless characters ... Pupkin is a nothing." Scorsese says that "people were confused with "King of Comedy" and saw Bob as some sort of mannequin". Scorsese has called De Niro's role as Rupert Pupkin his favorite of all their collaborations. Sandra Bernhard, who plays Masha in the film, indicated in a 2013 interview that Jack Black
Frank Rosenthal Spilotro, on which the character Nicky Santoro (played by Joe Pesci) is based. Rosenthal is represented by the character Sam "Ace" Rothstein (played by Robert De Niro). The character of Ginger McKenna Rothstein, his wife in the film (played by Sharon Stone), is based on Geri McGee, Rosenthal's wife in real life. In an interview about the movie, Rosenthal stated that his character portrayed by Robert De Niro was quite but not fully similar to him, namely "7 on a scale of 1 to 10", and that he would neither "dispute" nor "confirm" whether Sharon Stone accurately portrayed his wife