Night and the City (1992 film) De Niro's work as "more like a riff on Rupert Pupkin, the goofy talk show fan he played in Scorsese's "The King of Comedy"". Ebert and Howe both agreed, however, that Alan King's performance was fantastic. Owen Gleiberman concurred in his review, but he sided with Ebert regarding De Niro, concluding, "the actor who once seemed the heir to Brando, Clift, and, yes, Widmark — the actor who once got so far inside his roles that he just about detonated the screen — now plays characters who don't seem to have any inner life at all." David Ansen praised the
Robert De Niro the audience to a standing ovation with this denunciation of President Trump: A day later, in front of a crowd in Toronto, he apologized to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for President Trump's "idiotic behavior". De Niro was raised by an atheist mother and a lapsed Catholic father who left the Catholic Church at age 12. His grandparents had him secretly baptized Catholic, and his grandmother was the main advocate of Catholicism in the family. He refuses to be asked about religion in interviews. When asked why he would not play Jesus Christ in Martin Scorsese's 1988 film "The Last