The first date in De Niro and Scorsese's long partnership remains one of their most electric collaborations. As the volatile Johnny Boy -- a charismatic, debt-leaking wastrel whose destructive impulses are dwarfed only by his self-destructive ones -- the then 30-year-old actor blindsided critics with a raw dynamism that his later works with the director would polish to more exacting, though not necessarily more powerful, effect. The Academy would latch on to his gifts only one year later. 

Award: Best Supporting Actor, National Society of Film Critics