‘The Alto Knights’: Watch Robert De Niro play dual roles
Robert De Niro takes on dual roles in the Mafia movie “The Alto Knights,” playing real-life gangsters Vito Genovese and Frank Costello.
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Robert De Niro has been a riveting force in countless films, but never more so than when portraying mobsters, whether the young Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II” or James Conway in “Goodfellas.” So how about De Niro playing not one but two Mafia kingpins in the same movie?
That’s what we’ve got in “The Alto Knights” (in theaters Friday), the true story of friends-turned-enemies Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. De Niro was initially cast to play Costello, but when challenged agreed to also play Genovese, adopting a pinched accent and enduring hours in the makeup chair.
When producer Irwin Winkler suggested, “‘Why don’t you think about playing both parts,’ I said, ‘What does that mean, how do we do that? Give me a moment to think about it,’ ” says De Niro, 81, who most recently appeared in the Netflix series “Zero Day.”
“I didn’t really think I’d be doing another gangster movie, but doing both roles I thought would justify it even more,” the actor says. “Plus, I’d do anything with these two people.”
He means frequent collaborators Winkler and director Barry Levinson (who made “The Wizard of Lies” and “Wag the Dog” with De Niro). The duo were intrigued by a movie that could tell not only the Cain and Abel story of two childhood pals turned lethal adversaries, but also the demise of the Mafia’s national stranglehold, which began with Costello’s famous testimony before a congressional hearing in 1951.
‘The Alto Knights’ was written by a giant of the Mob genre, Nicholas Pileggi
“The Alto Knights” has impressive Hollywood mob film DNA. Its script was written by Nicholas Pileggi, who adapted two of his Mafia books into screenplays that starred De Niro: “Goodfellas” (1990) and “Casino” (1995), both directed by Martin Scorsese.
While “Alto Knights” − which refers to a New York social club frequented by mob members − traces the mob’s slow dissolution, the film’s main appeal is watching a master actor act opposite himself.
For those scenes where he is literally in dialogue with himself as both Costello and Genovese, De Niro said his lines to an actor in the film (Joe Bacino), who offered to double as De Niro’s other lead character.
“I couldn’t do it with someone just reading lines to me,” says De Niro. “Joe seemed like a good guy to work with, so he learned the parts. He also knew that world, so even if we went off a bit (from the script), I knew it would be OK.”
Says Levinson of his star, “Bob really responded to the challenge of playing both guys. He had to develop different rhythms. Vito is more aggressive, both as a character and in the way he talks. But though Bob is a great actor, he still really works on things. It was fascinating to see him craft the two roles.”
De Niro brushes off suggestions that the task was laborious. “Yeah, sure, Vito has a more clipped way of talking, but I just tried to show how different these two guys became after their childhoods,” he says. “I watched whatever films they were in, the real guys, which wasn’t much. So in the end, I just had to jump in.”
Debra Messing’s role as a mob wife found her improvising opposite Robert De Niro
For comedian Debra Messing, (“Will & Grace”) who plays Costello’s concerned wife Bobbie, De Niro’s penchant for getting deep inside his character proved terrifying.
“He’s the GOAT, so, yes, I was nervous,” she says with a laugh. “We did a table read with a few scenes, and I had worked on Bobbie’s accent and did all my good student acting work, but on the third line, Bob started improving. I froze. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, Robert De Niro is improvising with me, and I don’t know anything about this story, really.’”
De Niro was reassuring and kind to his impressed co-star, says Messing, who learned to understand the man’s method through close observation. “He would talk about things that seemed tangential, and then find his way back to the scene, but that’s just his process,” she says.
Mob boss Frank Costello was bold on many fronts, including marrying a Jewish woman
There was another interesting twist to the role. “I just loved that this was a true story, and that Frank Costello was the only mob boss who married someone Jewish,” says Messing, who is Jewish. “That was intriguing to me. I did a lot of research on her and learned what a strong woman she was. She was not of her time. They were real partners and she had opinions that he respected.”
Of Messing’s performance, Levinson says that while he’d “never seen her do anything dramatic before,” the actress had a sense of the character immediately. “It was best to just leave her alone,” he says.
Same approach for his star, who relished the challenge of playing two men from similar upbringings who then took such different approaches to their lives in the Mafia.
“Ultimately,” says De Niro, “what it comes down to I guess is these guys are two sides of the same coin.”
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