The ‘Home Alone’ role Robert De Niro turned down
At the apex of his career, a time when he made a regular habit of starring in a string of the greatest movies ever made, Robert De Niro was hardly renowned for his comedic chops or preference for slapstick.
That being said, he quite literally starred in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy in 1982, although it would be an understatement to say the satirical jet-black comedy wasn’t designed to have audiences laughing uproariously in the aisles. However, things could have turned out very differently had De Niro agreed to play Harry Lyme in Home Alone.
Of course, Joe Pesci hardly stood out as the ideal pratfalling comic foil for Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister either, especially when the Christmastime classic would release in cinemas less than two months after what proved to be an Academy Award-winning outing for the actor as the terrifying Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas, which coincidentally co-starred De Niro.
That being said, Pesci had a stronger background in comedy through the likes of Rodney Dangerfield’s Eureka and his motor-mouthed turn as Leo Getz in Lethal Weapon 2, so on paper, at least he was a much stronger fit than his opposite number in Scorsese’s gangster classic.
Although De Niro has never directly acknowledged how heavily in the mix he was for Home Alone during the casting process, director Chris Columbus did confirm to Insider that “it was talked about a little bit internally” before admitting he was “stunned” when Pesci agreed to sign on.
In fact, De Niro has never even gotten around to seeing the generational family favourite in its finished form, despite his long-standing friendship with Pesci and status as a father to seven children born between 1976 and 2023, as he told CinemaBlend: “I’ll be honest with you, I never saw Home Alone. I would see it but I just didn’t. Maybe I’ll see it with one of my kids.”
It wouldn’t be until almost a decade later that De Niro would dive headlong into comedy, which got off to a solid start through Analyze This and Meet the Parents, with the Oscar winner elaborating on how that opened a door career-wise: “I don’t know how that evolved, but Jay Roach and I had a meeting, I don’t know how, but I wound up committing to that and then that whole thing started.”
Since then, his comedic endeavours have experienced their fair share of ups and downs, ranging from his recurring role in the Fockers franchise as Jack Byrnes and scene-stealing supporting role as an extravagant pirate in Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust to the interminable likes of Dirty Grandpa, Grudge Match, The War with Grandpa, and About My Father to name but four.
It would have happened eventually, but it remains undeniably fascinating to imagine how De Niro’s comedic trajectory could have gone initially had Home Alone marked his first broad studio-backed caper.
