The co-star Robert De Niro couldn’t stand working with: “He felt sick”
Robert De Niro is a man who inspires reverence in his fellow actors.
He’s been one of Hollywood’s most respected stars since the 1960s, so it stands to reason that anyone working with him would be falling over themselves to make a good impression. However, De Niro is also a method actor, and that comes with its own unique challenges.
That reputation doesn’t just come from his performances on screen, but from the intensity he brings to every role behind the scenes. De Niro has long been known for immersing himself completely in his characters, a commitment that can elevate a film but also create a very particular atmosphere on set, especially for those unaccustomed to that level of dedication.
For those who ascribe to this most actorly of techniques, the method is all about inhabiting a character so fully that there is no easy off switch. It often means staying in character between takes, requiring the cast and crew to only refer to you by the name of your character, and generally losing all earthly perspective. A movie set with one method actor is hard enough, but when you have two of them and their processes are slightly different, things can get testy.
When those approaches don’t align, it can quickly lead to friction. Different interpretations of the same craft can clash in subtle ways, turning what should be a collaborative process into something far more complicated, particularly when both actors are used to working on their own terms.
That is what happened when De Niro shared a spotlight with Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips’ 2019 hit, Joker. The Raging Bull star was only in a handful of scenes playing a polished talk show host, but his conversation on live television with Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is one of the most uncomfortable and tense in the whole film. For the most part, De Niro and Phoenix understood each other’s processes. They barely spoke except to introduce themselves and avoided small talk entirely.
“We didn’t need to talk about anything,” De Niro said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “We just say, ‘Do the work. Relate as the characters to each other.’”
That seemed to work pretty well on both sides at that point in the production process, but earlier in the sequence of things, their relationship was not so understanding. When it came time for the cast to sit down and do a table read of the script, Phillips had to contend with Phoenix’s utter refusal to do anything of the sort and De Niro’s utter insistence that it happen.
“Bob called me and he goes, ‘Tell him he’s an actor and he’s got to be there, I like to hear the whole movie, and we’re going to all get in a room and just read it,’” the director recalled. “And I’m in between a rock and a hard place because Joaquin’s like, ‘There’s no fucking way I’m doing a read-through,’ and Bob’s like, ‘I do read-throughs before we shoot, that’s what we do.’”
The happy medium was not at all happy. Phoenix mumbled his lines, disappeared into a corner to smoke, and refused to talk when De Niro asked him for a private word. “He felt sick after that read-through,” Phillips explained. “He didn’t like it”.
Finally, De Niro prevailed. They had their little chat, hashed out some issues, and set aside their differences. Phillips even reported that De Niro kissed his co-star on the cheek at the end. Whether the warm feeling was mutual is unclear, and given that the actors avoided speaking to each other when production got underway, De Niro probably didn’t know either. In the film, they have a tense and brief meeting, so they may not have had to do much acting at all.
