One fan has pinpointed the exact year Robert De Niro gave up

Over the course of a nearly 50-year career, Robert De Niro has gone from being one of the most exciting, galvanizing actors of his or any generation to being known as “that guy who will appear in pretty much anything, as long as they pay him enough and the craft service is decent.” That’s a shocking, disheartening transition, but when exactly did it happen? When did he give up? It’s not like De Niro went directly from the set of Taxi Driver to the set of Meet The Fockers. There must have been a point at which De Niro essentially said to himself, “Fuck this Oscar-worthy stuff. I’m going for the long green.” Now, much to the betterment of future film historians, a diligent statistician named James Chapman has managed to pinpoint the exact year when that happened: 2002. After plotting on a graph the Rotten Tomatoes scores of various De Niro movies, Chapman shared his findings via an infographic on his Twitter account: