Robert De Niro in Cannes, May 20, 2023 Photo: Getty
Robert De Niro's voice broke through the respectful silence of the courtroom at Manhattan. like a hammer on glass. “Shame on you,” he shouted. A wave of amazement swept through the hall. Did the 80-year-old actor accept a civil lawsuit over a Hollywood film set during the height of his career?
The outburst became an immediate topic of discussion during this week's legal battle between De Niro and his former assistant and vice-president of his production company Chase Robinson, who is suing him for $12 million (£9.8 million) in damages ) for “serious emotional disturbance”. and reputational harm.”
The lawsuit dragged on for several years, and De Niro angrily denied the allegations. To be sure, he's countersuing Robinson for $6 million (£4.9 million), accusing her of diverting company funds for personal use.
It's unclear how the case will develop now that it's finally it went to court. Whatever happens, it looks set to dispel any lingering illusions that De Niro is anything but the fiery characters he plays on screen.
The allegations against De Niro include “unjustified unwanted physical contact” involving the actor requesting Robinson to scratch his back. She offered to scratch his back – he said, “I like the way you do it.” De Niro did not deny making such requests, but never did so with “disrespect for obscenity.” It was that conclusion that prompted him to shout “Shame on you” at Robinson this week from the witness stand.
Sketch by Robert De Niro testifying in Manhattan. Photo: AP
Other allegations include De Niro asking Robinson to bring him a martini. from the Nobu sushi restaurant at 23:00. He also said he called her twice during his grandmother's funeral and asked her to book a bus ticket for his teenage son. “So?” he shrugged in court.
De Niro conceded a few points. He “might” call Robinson a “bitch in the face.” And when she didn't remind him of the urgent meeting, he admitted that he lost his temper and “maybe” called her a girl.
“De Niro launched tirades against Ms. Robinson—often while intoxicated—in which he denigrated, berated, mocked, and hurled obscenities at her,” her lawyers charged in their original 2019 lawsuit. De Niro's representatives hit back. “The allegations brought by Graham Chase Robinson against Robert De Niro are beyond absurd,” said his lawyer Tom Harvey.
De Niro's production company, Canal, hastened to file a counterclaim against Robert De Niro. Robinson. He accuses her of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars and “loitering during work hours, binge-watching TV shows on Netflix for hours.”
Robert De Niro's former assistant Graham Chase Robinson outside court in New York on October 30, 2023. Photo: Getty
His lawyers will no doubt mount a strong defense in the coming weeks. Still, the voicemail attached to Robinson's suit paints a perhaps compelling portrait. It is alleged that De Niro left it for her after she moved to Europe.
“Chase, you live in Spain and you're so damn upset with me because now you're telling me how great your life is there and you're not fucking answering my call?”
>
“How dare you. you're absolutely fired, you're an awesome story. How dare you, with all the good things you do, this is _______ after Christmas, ***, how dare you, ***, disrespect me, how much you did.”
Whatever happens, De Niro will still be considered one of the greatest actors of all time. It's like we knew all along that he was foul-mouthed and grumpy, but we gave him a free pass… because he's Robert De Niro.
Robert De Niro in the movie “Taxi Driver” Photo: Alamy
No one inhabits the street bad boy with quite the same ferocity. Whether he's playing a seething gangster in Goodfellas, a vengeful psychopath in Taxi Driver, or a self-referential cartoon Nazi in Rocky and Bullwinkle, he's always a lot of fun to watch. Rocket villainy never burned brighter than when De Niro had a mustache figuratively attached to his upper lip.
The irony is that behind the scenes he is portrayed as a secular saint. This is despite his long history of wild behavior in public and his past as a party animal on the Sunset Strip. Or the fact that over the last 25 years you could count on one bloody stump for his truly memorable performances. The modern De Niro may be a sullen, slumming worker who many argue is guilty of double standards.
Remember his constant tirades against Donald Trump: just last month he called the former president “evil” and a “wannabe tough guy.” De Niro appears to see no connection between his attacks on the Republican Party and his participation in the rapid gentrification of New York that has turned the city into a Disneyland for high rollers.
He, for example, is the owner of the $1,000-a-night Greenwich Hotel in TriBeCa. The nearby Tribeca Grill displays the work of his artist father. You may be gawking at them, wondering if you can afford a family-sized tomato salad appetizer for $21.
Dining Room Nobu Downtown, co-owned by Robert De Niro. Photo: Eric Leignell/Courtesy of Rockwell Group
This is just the tip of De Niro's business iceberg. He is the co-founder of the upscale Japanese-Peruvian chain Nobu, which owns 39 restaurants and eight luxury hotels. De Niro inevitably banned Trump from his Nobu restaurants. Given the president's reputation for blacklisting journalists, one would hope De Niro would take a higher position. Apparently not.
He can also be vindictive towards his fellow actors – at least that's what Mickey Rourke claims. The two had a falling out while shooting Angel Heart almost 40 years ago. De Niro, apparently, is not inclined to leave the past in the past. Rourke claims he vetoed his appearance in The Irishman. “The casting officer told my manager that Robert De Niro said he refused to work with me in the film,” Rourke told the Italian TV show.
“I don’t look up to him anymore; I look right through him,” Rourke continued. “I came out of the shit. He doesn't know this life. I lived this damn life, so every time I look at his face, I'm looking right at his ass.” (De Niro's rep subsequently released a statement on behalf of The Irishman's producers and casting director: “Mickey Rourke was never asked to appear in The Irishman, nor was he even thought about, discussed or expected to appear in the film.” he said.)
It's not just his fellow actors who are on his side. He is known for being an aggressive conversationalist and also neurotic. “He became as paranoid as Marlon [Brando],” actress Shelley Winters admitted to Vanity Fair in 1987. “Bobby will call and ask if I saw him in Angel's Heart—you know, where he plays the Devil? – and I say “no”, and he gets angry and hangs up. And one more thing – I don’t see him anymore!”
Vanity Fair touched on his reputation as a party animal during the golden period of his career. In the late seventies he ran alongside Robin Williams and John Belushi. In fact, De Niro was one of the last people to see Belushi alive before his fatal drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont bungalow in Los Angeles in March 1982.
“He… gets very upset if people say anything about his friend John Belushi,” the magazine reported. “After the great comedian died of cocaine and heroin poisoning in March 1982, De Niro burst into tears. On the night of his death, he was in Belushi's room at the Chateau Marmont, but left almost immediately, considering the woman Belushi was with “trashy.”
Typically, celebrities, like the rest of us, become softer and less self-obsessed with age. Not De Niro. In 2015 he refused an interview with Radio Times. He bristled at the “negative” questions, and then bristled even more when the interviewer made it clear that she was not happy about being addressed as “darling.”
Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in Killers of the Flower Moon Photo: Alamy
The extraordinary mistake Emma Brocks made was wondering if Tribeca was overrun with rich bankers. She also asked De Niro about the difficulty of not going into autopilot on set. She didn't blame him for being on autopilot. The question was the opposite: an invitation to the actor to explain how he manages to maintain his incredible ferocity and focus in front of the camera.
“Paranoid” De Niro did not take it that way. “Everything to the end. Negative conclusion,” he told an astonished Brox. “All the way, and I don’t do it. I won't do that, honey.”
“When someone refuses to cooperate in this kind of interview, when they are clearly grumpy and exhausted, you ask them a series of simple questions and walk away,” she later wrote. “You try to be respectful and polite, just like me. This was not a hostile interview. Poor guy – who wants to be contractually obligated to do that? But you do everything you can to get home.” (In 2006, American GQ journalist Chris Heath spent three weeks studying De Niro and managed to get him to say exactly 972 words.)
It's a shame that the same outrage unfolding in the courtroom as De Niro's . gives his best performance in years as the killer sheriff in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. In this film, he skillfully restrains his character; perhaps he will soon learn to do this even when the cameras are turned off.
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