‘As a kid I didn't root for the bad guys. I certainly know the difference between right and wrong but I think in our American tradition the bad guys get a lot of attention and you see it in the movies.

‘There is a certain amount of glamour, a certain allure that they have but we always have to remember to put it in the right perspective of what they represent. Like a Robin Hood thing in reverse but you always have to be aware of what the real world is too. I think “The Godfather” started it, popularised it in a very grand sense. It was a movie about the most traditionally reactionary type of people set in a time where so much was going on, the anti-war movement and everything else at the time.

‘But there was more loyalty going on in a romantic sense --this isn't the truth -- in The Family of “The Godfather” and the lines were drawn more clearly about what was what that attracted a lot of people.

‘Look at today. Who can you trust?

‘Then, in those “Godfather” times you couldn't have faith in the Government, you cold have faith in The Family government

‘The bad guys are always more interesting than the good guys.

‘The antagonist is more interesting than the protagonist. Because we're human beings there's good and evil in all of us and villains act out the worst part of ourselves, the things we always feel.We kind of like to live through that vicariously.

‘Anybody who knows anything about acting knows it's much more fun. There is more room to do more interesting sorts of characters and show the contradictions in people.'

De Niro is a passionate researcher for each role. A nondescript face away from the camera -- he's an athletic, 5ft 10 1/2 inch tall man you really wouldn't glance twice at -- he will change his look by gestures or by physically altering as he did by swelling as Jake LaMotta and to play Al Capone in ‘The Untouchables': as well as sporting a shaved hairline wore Capone's favoured brand of silk underpants.

‘The preparation is personal. That's secret -- what you do and how you do it is a secret as long as you arrive at what ever you need to arrive at. That to me is a rule.

‘When you feel something is simple you think there must be more to it but the less the better. That's really the strongest way to go, the most powerful. Just having to do nothing. It;s very hard for actors in general to feel they're not doing enough.'

His reaction to being called America 's finest actor, one who with ‘Ronin' appears to have regained lost ground?

‘I don't look at it that way. I just do what I do. When one would think about what people perceive you as naturally one would feel a little nervous about it. I just don't think about it much.

‘I watch myself from time to time on screen. I was thinking the other day that I'd like to look at all the movies I've done and just see the kind of patterns and so on, what I could do differently in things in the future. I owe myself that.'

It is as though he is on some psychological adventure which began to flourish, disquietingly, nearly thirty years ago when Shelley Winters cast him in her off-Broadway play ‘One Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger.' The ebullient actress recalls seeing him act for the first time:' When he moved across the stage it was like lightning. Gave me tingles. I hadn't felt or seen anything like that since the 1940s when I saw Brando in a four performance flop.

‘Bobby almost never shows emotion in public but years ago here in New York I gave a Thanksgiving party. Bobby was there waiting for his date, a young actress he had a crush on. She didn't show up until dessert, she sort of floated in. He went into the bedroom and pounded the headboard with his fist.He was crying.He never talked to her again.'

But Winters is always keen that we should understand her ‘Bobby' who himself admitted:' Maybe I'm a little looser these days.'

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