The oscar-award winning actor was promoting his new film with Anne Hathaway The Intern during the awkward interview [Wenn].
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De Niro then reportedly asked Brockes to turn off the recorder and began pacing “madly”, complaining about the tone of the interview.
Robert De Niro has become the latest actor to join the growing list of stars who can’t make it all the way to the scheduled end of an interview in one friendly piece.
De Niro continued: ‘You’re probably not even aware that you’re doing it. The negative inference’.
Brockes told The Independent: “I have sympathy with De Niro because nobody wants to be there for these choreographed junket interviews”.
The reporter also notes that during a round table interview with several journalists, his co-star Anne Hathaway started to cry when asked what it was like to work with De Niro. “I certainly didn’t go in looking for an argument but when it happened I did think “at least he’s finally saying something“.
Russell Crowe past year labelled an Irish reporter a “plonker” on Twitter, claiming she got “shirty” after she didn’t get the answer she desired at the Noah premiere in Dublin.
Refusing to respond, Quentin said bluntly: “I’m not your slave and you’re not my master …”
In an interview earlier in the day, Nancy Meyers had said that the young guys on the set had been so excited to work with De Niro they had mobbed him between takes.
His iconic part as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (“You talking to me?”) and New York, New York – both with Scorsese behind the camera – and 1978’s The Deer Hunter followed. “We kind of blow off the millennials, they blow off us, and here they really have a good experience with each other”, she said. Of course along the way there are complications that arrive, including in Jules’ personal life with her stay-at-home husband and daughter, but this film never goes to the cliche that a top businesswoman can’t have it all.
If this sounds rather corny, De Niro plays it to a tee sensitive, grounded, warm.
“I think if you retire, you stagnate if you don’t have something to do – unless you enjoy doing nothing”. She asked him where else she was being negative.
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Jokes are made in the film over Ben’s lack of technical savvy (De Niro assures us he’s not as helpless in real life, though he doesn’t do Facebook or Twitter), but the actor hopes The Intern gives young people a fresh perspective on aging.
