It wasn’t a great book, but there was something about it, a jumping-off point, if you will.” “I read Jake LaMotta’s memoir, Raging Bull: My Story, when I was working on the film 1900 in Italy,” De Niro says, “and I told Marty to read it. TIME talked to De Niro about his recollections of working on what has, over the years, come to be considered one of the greatest American films ever made. De Niro’s riveting and at-times harrowing portrayal of world middleweight boxing champ Jake LaMotta won him a Best Actor Oscar, and raised the bar for onscreen Method performances when the actor famously gained 60 pounds to play a bloated LaMotta late in life. 17, 1943, in New York City - TIME presents a fittingly iconic portfolio of pictures by photographer Brian Hamill, made on the set of Raging Bull in 1979. Here, on the occasion of De Niro’s 70th birthday - he was born Aug. Add to those his performances in movies as diverse as The Deer Hunter, The Godfather: Part II, Midnight Run, Cop Land and Silver Linings Playbook, and the scope of the man’s accomplishments comes into formidable focus. Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas - the list goes on and on.

If Robert De Niro never acted in any other movies besides those he’s made with his frequent director and collaborator, Martin Scorsese, he’d still be a film legend.

Joey lamotta