CREDITS GOODFELLAS, 1990 dir: Martin Scorsese Ray Liotta Robert de Niro Joe Pesci Lorraine Bracco Paul Sorvino

“Being a gangster was better than being President of the United States”

There’s no trace of special pleading in Martin Scorsese’s hard-eyed look at the career of Henry Hill, shot entirely on location around New York City, the borough of Queens and New Jersey.

The home of young Herny (Christopher Serrone), where he enviously watches the sharp-suited wiseguys, is 2409 32nd Street, just south of 24th Avenue, Astoria, in Queens.

The ‘Idlewild Airport’ scenes used the cargo buildings of Kennedy Airport. Idlewild became Kennedy Airport in 1963, but it's near to New York's other main airport, LaGuardia, that youíll find the ‘Airline Diner’, where the grown-up Hill (Ray Liotta) and pal Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) steal a truck. It’s now part of the Jackson Hole franchise. Confusingly, but thankfully, it keeps the famous old neon ‘Airline’ sign. You can grab a burger in the classic pink and chrome interior of the Jackson Hole Diner, 69-35 Astoria Boulevard at 70th Street in Queens (tel: 718.204.7070).

Goodfellas: young Henry Hill's home: 2409 32nd Street, Astoria, Queens

The kitschy Bamboo Lounge, where Tommy does his scary “funny guy” turn was the Hawaii Kai Restaurant, 49th Street at Broadway. It’s now a stylish Japanese restaurant and the glorious South Seas decor is only a memory.

Karen (Lorraine Bracco) is distinctly unimpressed with Hill on the first disastrous double date, at Salerno’s Restaurant, 11711 Hillside Avenue at Myrtle Avenue, Richmond Hill, Queens (tel: 718.846.9332).

But Hill goes on to make a little more of an impression, whisking her through the kitchen entrance of the old Copacabana Nightclub (now closed), 10 East 60th Street at Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. You can still see the entrance used for the electrifying tracking shot.

The posh beach club, where Hill relaxes with Karen after his first big airport job, is the Catalina Beach Club, 2041 Park Street in Atlantic Beach (tel: 516.239.2150) on Long Islandís southwest coast.

Hillís ‘Suite Lounge’, where Billy Batts gets stomped into a bloody pulp, to the gentle hippie strains of Donovan’s Atlantis, is Sogdiana Restaurant (formerly the Spartan), 7320 Grand Avenue at 73rd Place, Maspeth, Queens. Although it’s still recognisable, the streamlined fifties exterior has been somewhat remodelled since filming.

Goodfellas: Bodies in the Cadillac: Long Island Railroad trestle, Richmond Hills, Queens

As Jimmy Conway (Robert de Niro) cuts the links between himself and the airline robbery, bodies start to turn up all over. Kids discover the bloody couple in a pink cadillac under the trestle of the Long Island Railroad tracks on Babbage Street, alongside Salerno’s in Richmond Hills.

Karen’s edgy meeting with the increasingly paranoid Conway was filmed on Smith Street at 9th Street, alongside the Gowanus Canal, under the elevated railway F Line in Brooklyn’s dodgy Red Hook district.

The shopping mall where coked-out Hill makes a phone call about being followed by a ’copter, is on Richmond Avenue, Staten Island.

Filming also took place on the Palisades Parkway, which runs along the west bank of the Hudson River in New Jersey; at Fort Lee, just over the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey; at New Rochelle on Route 95 north of New York City; on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn; in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and at Valley Stream, Long Island.

Henry Hill’s trial, where he finally informs on Jimmy and boss Paulie (Paul Sorvino), was filmed in New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street.