Robert de Niro at Work: From Screenplay to Screen Performance

Robert De Niro at Work is the first critical study to examine how Robert de Niro, perhaps the finest screen actor of his generation, works with screenplays to imagine, prepare and denote his performance. In categorising the various ways in which De Niro works with a screenplay, this book will re-examine the relationship between actor and text. This book considers the screenplay as above all a working document and a material object, present at every stage of the filmmaking process. The working screenplay goes through various iterations in development and exists in many versions on set, each adapted and personalised for the specific use of the individual and their role. As the archive reveals, nobody works more closely with the script than the actor, and no actor works more on a script than De Niro.

Adam Ganz is Reader in Screenwriting at Royal Holloway, University of London. As well as theoretical work on screenwriting and narrative Ganz also writes for Radio film and TV and works as a dramaturg and script consultant.

Steven Price is Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Film at Bangor University. He is the author of The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism and A History of the Screenplay, and former editor of the Journal of Screenwriting.