"'Like many viewers,' says James Naremore in Acting in the Cinema, 'I often have difficulty recalling or even registering the names of the dramatis personae in old Hollywood movies. For me at least, it is usually John Wayne getting on a horse, seldom the Ringo Kid or Ethan Edwards.'

John Wayne acts as himself (which is quite different from saying that he does not act); he has a range of recognisable gestures and a predictable way of moving ('from stylised gesture to feeling'), a way of holding his body in reserve which is in total accord with the measured Fordian unravelling of repression. De Niro, on the other hand, uses his body not only to signify character but as a site of performance activity; he conveys, across characters, a sense of acting through the body."

Lesley Stern The Scorsese Connection