The actor Robert De Niro wants to make a comedy movie with: “I’ve always wanted to”
It’s safe to say that Robert De Niro has cemented himself as a bona fide Hollywood legend, appearing in over 100 films, picking up a laundry list of acting nominations and awards, and throwing in a presidential medal of freedom if we’re keeping count. De Niro found his big break in Scorcese’s mob classic Mean Streets, and the pair have been nearly inseparable ever since.
Alongside his partnership with one of America’s greatest cinematic treasures, he also found the time to appear in films directed by the likes of Sergio Leone, Francis Ford Coppola and Quentin Tarantino, a list most actors would sell an organ or an aunt to work with. Not content with only working with greats behind the camera, it’s hard to find an iconic actor that De Niro hasn’t shared the screen with – it is genuinely easier to list who he hasn’t acted alongside – and at 81 years old he’s still going strong.
You would think that, with such a storied career and star power to boot, De Niro could click his fingers and work with any co-star he wanted, but this doesn’t quite seem to be the case. In an interview from 1988, De Niro expressed his wish to make a comedy with Meryl Streep, stating, “Yeah, she’s terrific. She’s smart, Meryl, but she’s also very funny. A great comic sense, a great comedienne. I’ve always wanted to do a comedy with her.” It’s a shock that no studio has jumped at the chance at reuniting the pair of Hollywood Heavyweights for a milquetoast straight to streaming comedy.
Streep and De Niro originally met on the set of the critically acclaimed film The Deer Hunter, a film following the story of three friends conscripted into the Vietnam War. This was followed by their co-starring in Falling in Love in 1984. While you would think that a romantic drama between two industry sweethearts would be a surefire hit, this was anything but the case.
Instead, the film was met with mixed reviews, with critics calling out stilted dialogue and tired cliches, and audiences voted with their feet, leaving Falling in Love a box office flop.
It was on this film that De Niro and Streep had discussed working on a comedy, De Niro explained, “At one point we were even trying to find something, but we didn’t come up with an idea. We used to do takeoffs on Falling in Love, and that was fun.’ It seems that studios found the box office performance anything but funny, and perhaps that’s why the duos dream comedy never materialised.
Meryl Streep has made no secret of her admiration for De Niro, and after watching his dazzling and psychotic performance in Taxi Driver she’s quoted as saying, “I said to myself, that’s the kind of actor I wanna be. That’s what I wanna do. And I wanna do it with the commitment and the passion and the skill and the beauty with which he applies to it. And he’s been my beacon for 50 years.” This is no small praise from acting’s Iron Lady, so perhaps there is still hope we’ll see a De Niro—Streep comedy pairing, but let’s hope it’s more Devil Wears Prada than Dirty Grandpa for all of our sakes.
