The effort involved years of collaborative work from some of the industry’s top visual-effects artists, costume designers, makeup artists and even sound editors. To portray the hitman Frank Sheeran in Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic “The Irishman” - a role that spans more than five decades, from Sheeran’s service in World War II to his death in 2003 - the 76-year-old De Niro was put into a time machine unlike any seen in film history. The extreme gain temporarily wrecked his health, but for his trouble he won his second Oscar - and the awed respect of every actor on the planet.īut not even the protean De Niro can reverse the relentless march of time. For 1980’s “Raging Bull,” the actor, then in his mid-30s, famously put on 20 pounds of muscle to play boxing champ Jake LaMotta then, over the course of several weeks, he packed on 60 pounds of fat to play the fighter as a bloated, washed-up older man. Few actors have undergone more dramatic physical transformations onscreen than Robert De Niro.

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