“The experience I fantasised about”: when Robert De Niro mesmerised Edward Norton on the set of ‘Stone’
Edward Norton falls squarely into the category of an actor’s actor. He’s the kind of performer you call when you need a flawless yet unassuming performance or a nondescript character to steal every scene. Since the 1990s, he’s been turning in formidably versatile work, often within a single performance. In his breakthrough movie Primal Fear, for example, he played a stammering altar boy charged with murder who turns out to be harbouring another character just under the surface. He was nominated for an Oscar for the role, heralding his arrival into the ranks of Hollywood’s most respected character actors at the tender age of 27.
Then, of course, there was Fight Club, in which he played a nihilistic loner who meets a magnetic stranger (Brad Pitt) and begins fighting for fun. When it’s revealed that Pitt’s character is Norton’s alter ego, it’s certainly a twist, but due to Norton’s masterful performance, it feels more like a revelation than an outlandishly contrived plot device.
Norton has been nominated for a total of three Oscars, including for his role in American History X and Birdman. He’s also heavily tipped to be nominated (and win) for playing Pete Seeger in James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. He’s easily one of the most respected actors of his generation, but he can still get starstruck. During a 2010 interview with film critic Emanuel Levy, he talked about working with Robert De Niro on the John Curran thriller Stone.
“So many young actors dream of making a film with Bob,” he said. “For me, this was the experience I fantasised about.”
In the film, De Niro plays a parole officer on the brink of retirement who is manipulated and tormented by Norton’s character, a sadistic murderer and arsonist who will do anything to get out of prison.
“It is a monumental performance,” Norton said of De Niro’s work in the film, adding, “I found it unsettling and disturbing, as well as remarkably nuanced and insightful.”
That quality of getting to the heart of a complex, dangerous character was what Norton idolised about his co-star long before working with him.
“Bob’s work over the years has included some of the deepest investigations of dysfunction and loss in American cinema,” he said, and added, “He’s explored themes like rage and fame and some of the more corrosive effects of American life more deeply than anyone else I can think of.”
Despite having some of the most respected actors at its helm, Stone received poor reviews for its convoluted and unnecessarily far-fetched plot. Luckily, for those who want to see these two monumental performers having a little more fun in a movie more deserving of their skills, there is The Score, an underrated 2001 heist film in which Norton plays a hotshot thief who coaxes De Niro’s safecracker out of imminent retirement for one last heist.
It isn’t a masterpiece, but it showcases their on-screen chemistry much better than Stone and has a much more propulsive, upbeat pace. There is also the small fact that it co-stars Marlon Brando, yet another generational talent who Norton was no doubt thrilled to work with.
