Watch Robert De Niro Describe Driving a Real Cab to Get in Character for 'Taxi Driver' (Exclusive)

If you took a taxi cab in Manhattan in the summer of 1975, there’s a chance that your driver might have been Robert De Niro. Prior to shooting Martin Scorsese’s classic urban noir, Taxi Driver, the meticulously Method actor spent two weeks hacking it on the New York City streets like his iconic character Travis Bickle. De Niro recounted his experiences behind the wheel in front of a rapt audience following a 40th anniversary screening of Taxi Driver at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Watch an exclusive clip from that event above, and view the whole thing as part of a special Fathom Events anniversary screening of the film to be held in cinemas around the country on Oct. 16 and Oct. 19. (Yahoo Movies was front and center for the Tribeca screening; read our full round-up for more great war stories from the Taxi Driver set; the complete Tribeca Q&A will be included on a newly restored Blu-ray edition out Nov. 8.)

With an all-star panel that included Scorsese, screenwriter Paul Schrader and co-stars Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, and Jodie Foster looking on, De Niro described how we went directly from shooting Bernardo Bertolucci’s nearly six-hour epic 1900 on location in Italy to piloting a classic New York yellow cab. According to Scorsese, there was one passenger who couldn’t play it cool about being driven around town by a recent Oscar winner. (De Niro took home a Best Supporting Actor statue in April 1975 for playing the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II.) “You told me that a guy got in the car, and he noticed it was your name on the driver’s license and said, ‘My God, you just won an Oscar! Is it that hard to get a job as an actor?’” the director recalled. “I said ‘Yeah,'” De Niro added simply. Good to know he’s still got that fallback career in case this acting thing stops paying off.