Hollywood's biggest bore? Why Robert De Niro desperately needs a new script

Telegraph

16-05-2025

There are many things to say about the two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro. How he has acquired, and maintained, a reputation as the finest actor of his generation, despite appearing in more bad films than any thespian of comparable talent, save his friend and occasional co-star Al Pacino. How he has made a fortune out of pursuing business ventures outside of acting, most famously investing in the Nobu restaurant group, but also in everything from jukebox musicals (We Will Rock You) to real estate; he is said to own a substantial proportion of the upmarket Tribeca neighbourhood in his native New York.
But has De Niro ever made any public comment about any of these things? No, he has not. Or at least, if he has, it will be a mumbled couple of words.
It is now clear to any seasoned De Niro observer that the man hates being interviewed, whether out of shyness, deep contempt for journalists or something else entirely. He refuses to put a coherent or interesting sentence together, and when he does say something, it is either painfully banal or simply gnomic. Some would call this his prerogative; others would describe it simply as rudeness. Yet it is a prerequisite of the film business that its best-loved practitioners agree to answer questions, usually to promote a new picture. In the case of De Niro, he usually leaves everyone wishing that he hadn't bothered.
Very quickly, this #Cannes Robert De Niro conversation is getting sapped of its standing-o energy (partly because De Niro has always been man of few words, partly because interviewer JR — yes, the photographer — is getting stuck in go-nowhere questions). JR, mention Trump, quick! pic.twitter.com/EqZQIdMg7S
— Barry Hertz (@HertzBarry) May 14, 2025
The latest embarrassment occurred at this year's Cannes film festival, when De Niro, who is in the process of making a mysterious but fascinating-sounding documentary about his parents and their artistic lives, was interviewed on stage by his collaborator JR, a French street photographer and artist. It did not go well. The event was billed as a 'Rendezvous with Robert De Niro', but the actor, who was also awarded an honorary Palme d'Or at the festival – perhaps in a failed attempt to keep him sweet – appeared reticent at best, answering most of the questions he was asked with a shrug and 'Sometimes' or similarly vague answers.
Variety magazine, usually positive when it comes to reporting such events, described De Niro's demeanour as 'hostile', and one attendee tweeted, then deleted, their thoughts on the conversation: 'surreally catastrophic'. Yet De Niro's reticence – or rudeness – is sufficiently well known for his co-star Leonardo DiCaprio to remark, while giving him the Palme d'Or, that 'The thing about Bob is, he doesn't say much, but when he does, it matters. If I'm lucky, I'll get a nod from him tonight, maybe even a half-smile, and I will take that as a standing ovation.' At the fateful Rendezvous, there were not even many nods or half smiles, just an apparent weary contempt for the whole process.
If one wished to take on the thankless task of defending De Niro, one could cite his age (he's 81), likely jetlag and unwillingness to expose himself in front of an audience of strangers. Yet he has consistently been one of the least rewarding interviewees in the industry. The great writer Chris Heath famously wrote a GQ profile of him in 2006 entitled And Now, 972 Words from Robert De Niro, in which he detailed the utterly miserable process of attempting to interview the actor about The Good Shepherd, the wildly underrated film he directed about the foundation of the CIA.
Heath found himself being given short, unsatisfactory bursts of time with De Niro. He was treated like a supplicant at a medieval court, and when he was eventually allowed into the great man's presence, he was treated like an unwelcome interloper. Heath wrote incisively that 'there are fascinating flashes… but the conversation always splutters, at best, and often dries up completely. It seems as though each sentence gets checked before it is said, and then checked again as it's being said, and that faced with these tests, he rarely has enough faith in the sentence still being worth saying – with all its possibilities of being misunderstood or misconstrued.'
When Heath did get a response, it was dry to the point of pointless. Asking De Niro how he felt knowing that Taxi Driver had inspired John Hinckley to attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan, the actor replied, 'Well, I felt bad about it. I don't know. You know, people are… crazy. What are you gonna do.' This is not the kind of response that makes for sparkling profiles, and most of the feature ended up being about the unfortunate conversational lacunae that came about from De Niro's unwillingness – or refusal – to engage. It is also depressing because he is a man who has been involved in some of the greatest American films ever made, and should be a fascinating source of anecdote and insight into them. Instead, you're lucky to get a couple of words about the weather.
Of late, a pattern has developed. De Niro will only give interviews if the subject is of apparent great importance to him, such as a soft-focus recent Times piece about a new hotel that he has opened in the Bahamas, where rooms cost £2,000 a night. De Niro's response when asked about his extra-curricular activities – 'Yeah, just something to keep busy' – was typically useless, and the poor interviewer noted, 'His answers, perhaps more in line with his on-screen mode, have a tendency towards the monosyllabic.' One can only imagine that being asked to interview the actor is a punishment given to under-performing writers. It seems a deeply painful and agonising process all round.
Yet if De Niro is riled up, he becomes more interesting, and certainly more vocal. He publicly lambasted the tech mogul Stewart Butterfield in 2015 for making an offhand remark about his acting career. 'I thought you were condescending to us actors, celebrities,' De Niro said. 'I'm going to go on record with you just to say that. And I don't give a f–k who you are.' And, of course, there is the one subject that De Niro is guaranteed to be vocal about: Donald Trump.
Interviewers who had long since despaired of getting anything but the most basic of answers out of the actor were delighted, and surprised, when his obvious and deep hatred of the President meant that he suddenly found his voice. In 2016, he lambasted Trump as 'an idiot, a national disaster, an embarrassment to this country… this fool, this bozo'. This newfound gift of the gab was again on display at Cannes this year when he announced that 'America's philistine president has had himself appointed head of one of our premier cultural institutions [the Kennedy Centre ]. He has cut funding and support to the arts, humanities and education.' For a man given to shrugs and murmurs, this was Gettysburg-level stuff.
But even this angry eloquence can be hit and miss. Interviewers hoping to get some insights from De Niro, and wanting an old-fashioned rant in the process, have often been told instead that he is not interested in talking about politics. And sometimes, he goes the other way entirely. In 2023, he was awarded the Gotham Historic Icon award, and realised that his trademark searing remarks about Trump had been censored from the teleprompter, leading him to say, petulantly, that 'I don't really feel like thanking [Apple and the Gotham Awards] at all for what they did.' Some might regard this as the principled expression of a deep-rooted moral code. Others, who attach less importance to the witterings of millionaire actors, might see it as stone-cold rudeness.
De Niro has often been accused of shortness, if not active hostility, to those members of the public he is faced with in professional situations. He notoriously walked out of an interview with that hard-hitting magazine, the Radio Times, in 2015, when the journalist dared to ask him whether Tribeca had become an enclave for plutocrats. And his personal failings were brutally exposed in a civil suit by a former personal assistant of his, in which she claimed that the actor called her a bitch and a brat, and that he demanded that she scratch his back.
An outraged De Niro shouted 'Shame on you' in court when the allegation was made. The assistant was awarded $1.3 million in damages, albeit from De Niro's production company, rather than the man himself, but it still contributed to a sense that he is a tightly wound, often angry man who either is sullen or volcanic when faced with situations (read: interviews) that he doesn't like.
None of this detracts from his standing as an actor, and his stunning performances in his most recent Martin Scorsese collaborations, The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon, are a clear indication that he's still just as able a performer as he's ever been – when he can be bothered. Yet his latest display at Cannes is also a grim reminder that being brilliant and being difficult are not mutually exclusive, and this is likely to continue as long as he remains in the public eye.
Even seasoned pros such as Graham Norton seem to find it all but impossible to get anything meaningful or even usable out of De Niro, who sits on chat show sofas with that curious rigid grin that he displays when he's uncomfortable, and refuses to trot out the time-honoured anecdotes that his peers have stored up for decades.
It is possible, of course, that De Niro isn't shy, or rude, but simply deeply boring. All the qualities that make him so electrifying on screen – the unpredictability, the intelligence, the wit – seem entirely absent from the real-life man, and instead he now comes across as a grumpy octogenarian. The inevitable question is why he bothers, if the whole process causes him (and whichever poor sap has been sent to get his thoughts) so much discomfort.
Still, after you've weathered the unspeakably embarrassing sight of Tom Hiddleston doing an impersonation of you – to your face! – on a chat show, all things are relative, even this latest debacle.