Before he played a young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, Robert De Niro could so easily have been cast as a different key character in The Godfather. In hindsight, we should be glad that De Niro didn’t get the part, since his performance as Don Corleone during the early years of his criminal career was a feat of genius.

However, De Niro did go as far as auditioning for this Godfather character, long before he was considered for the role he ended up playing in the sequel. The actor was one of hundreds up for the part of Vito Corleone’s son in 1971, but director Francis Ford Coppola and Paramount Studios decided against casting him.

As it turned out, Robert De Niro’s audition was too funny to earn him the role he originally went for in The Godfather. He acted much the same way as he would go on to play the character “Johnny Boy” Civello in his first Martin Scorsese movie, Mean Streets, which was released a year after The Godfather.

Robert De Niro Auditioned For The Role Of Sonny Corleone In The Godfather

Francis Ford Coppola Released De Niro’s Audition Tape In 2024

Before shooting began on The Godfather, De Niro auditioned for the role of Sonny Corleone, Vito Corleone’s eldest son and heir apparent to the Corleone crime dynasty. The actor was also being considered for the 1971 comedy The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight when he did his audition, which potentially influenced the comedic bent of his performance as Sonny.

Had things turned out differently, it could have been De Niro starring in The Godfather, and Al Pacino featuring in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, as Pacino almost took De Niro’s part in the comedy film. In the end, though, it’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Pacino playing Vito’s youngest son, Michael.

On the other hand, De Niro couldn’t have been far away from getting the role of Michael’s older brother. He was a reputable young actor in New York who was already familiar to Francis Ford Coppola when he auditioned. Instead, however, James Caan, who’d also worked with Coppola before, was the actor who secured the role.

In 2024, De Niro’s audition to play Sonny Corleone was made public by Francis Ford Coppola on his YouTube channel. As the actor pretends to be explaining to Michael Corleone how to shoot someone in the head, we can hear Coppola and members of The Godfather‘s production team laughing in the background.

Francis Ford Coppola Made The Right Decision Not Casting De Niro As Sonny

He Couldn’t Convey Sonny’s Overzealous Masculinity

The laughs Robert De Niro got during his Sonny Corleone audition give us a clue as to the reason he was pᴀssed over for this role in The Godfather. Fundamentally, the comedic aspect De Niro was bringing to the character undermined the overzealous machismo at the core of Sonny’s conceptualization.

From a young age, Sonny has known that he stands to inherit his father’s crime empire, and so he has to behave like a mob boss. Yet, he’s nowhere near as intelligent, authoritative, or prudent as Vito. Instead, Sonny is spoilt and impulsive, and tries to cover up his shortcomings with performative displays of masculinity.

While it’s true that James Caan had his appearance altered to play Sonny in The Godfather, his performance as the character came entirely naturally. He embodies the movie’s macho older brother perfectly, and strikes the ideal balance between Sonny’s brash exterior and his underlying weaknesses. Caan portrayed masculine hubris in a way De Niro simply couldn’t at that time.

De Niro Was Perfect For The Role Of Young Vito Corleone In The Godfather Part II

No Other Actor Could Have Matched Marlon Brando’s Performance

As well as auditioning for the part of Sonny, De Niro almost played Paulie Gatto in The Godfather. Yet this minor role as a member of the Corleone family’s retinue would have completely wasted De Niro’s vast acting talent and prevented him from enacting one of his most iconic characterizations in The Godfather‘s sequel.

If anyone could rise to the intimidating challenge of following Marlon Brando by playing the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, it was De Niro. It’s difficult to imagine any other actor perfecting the mannerisms that Brando invented for Don Corleone without coming across as an impressionist rather than a character actor.

What’s more, only De Niro could have conveyed a coherent backstory for such an iconic character already synonymous with another actor, yet at the same time made the part his own. He matched Marlon Brando for charisma in the role, while expertly drawing subtle parallels to Michael’s transformation into Don Corleone during the first Godfather.

De Niro might have been closer to Brando’s real age in The Godfather than how old their respective versions of Vito were, but the two actors appear several decades apart in their iterations of the character. It’s a credit to De Niro that he could play such a compelling figure as much younger than he himself actually was.

Thus, we should be grateful that Francis Ford Coppola turned Robert De Niro down for the part of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. By the time the movie’s sequel came around, there were no comic overtones to be seen in De Niro’s performance. He was more than ready to ᴀssume one of the franchise’s two biggest roles.

Source: Francis Ford Coppola