His character, Travis, is a Dostoyevskiian anti-hero, an archetypal alienated man, a semi-literate Vietnam veteran who lives in a dingy apartment, watches a lot of television and because he can’t sleep at night, takes a job as a down-town cabbie. “Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere,” says Travis at one point. “In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man.” He lives the urban nightmare that degenerates into a killing spree after a series of rejections.
The film’s most famous line is ‘You talkin’ to me?’ which Travis says to himself while practicing drawing a gun in the mirror. At a recent event, De Niro declared: “Every day for 40 f—— years at least one of you has come up to me and said – what do you think – ‘You talkin’ to me?’”