Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, working his way up the ranks of a local mob. Amy Robinson is Teresa, the girlfriend his family deems unsuitable because of her epilepsy. And in the star-making role that won Best Supporting Actor Awards from the New York and National Society of FIlm Critics, Robert De Niro is Johnny Boy, a small-time gambler in big-time debt to loan sharks. This is a story Martin Scorsese lived, a semi-biographical tale of the first-generation sons and daughters of New York's Little Italy.