Robert De Niro’s most daunting movie experience taught him the most about the industry
Surely nothing rattled Robert De Niro.
In the whole of Hollywood, it’s tough to think of another actor as seasoned as him, as he started in school plays and climbed the ranks to the god-tier, now being seen as one of the most revered and respected names around. But still, some things are a challenge.
De Niro’s is a career of dreams. In every city, in every country across the world, kids are in community theatres or watching movies in their bedroom and are fantasising about having a resume as powerful as his. It’s not just the fact that he’s worked with and been adopted by the greats like Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola. It’s not even just the fact that he’s won award after award, including two Oscars.
Overwhelmingly, the admiration for De Niro’s career comes down to its breadth. It’s about the sheer scale of it as his work has spanned decades, genres and vastly different characters, avoiding being typecast as much as possible. He’s played every type of character imaginable by now, but he’s also played roles off-camera, extending his work there, too.
And that’s where the fear comes in. It’s tough to think of another actor as seasoned as him, but what about when he’s not being an actor? What about when he’s being a director instead?
He tried his hand at it first in 1993 with A Bronx Tale. The coming-of-age crime drama did OK, but realistically, it was a small operation that allowed him to dip his toes. Technically, it was his directorial debut, but it feels like The Good Shepherd in 2006 was his first time truly being ‘a director’.
Everything stepped up here. Suddenly, he was leading a major cast, including Angelina Jolie and Matt Damon, alongside directing himself. He was also the producer on that movie so there was the demand for him to be wearing a lot of hats and keeping control of a lot of business. Even though he’d starred in plenty of movies by then, and been on plenty of movie sets, this was something new. This was something scary.
“The Good Shepherd was such a daunting project that I had to think about it moment for moment, day by day,” he said to CNN. Unlike working as an actor where so much of the preparation comes beforehand as you learn the script and develop your character, De Niro found directing demanded much more presence.
It also demands social understanding and intense empathy for the cast and crew, as a good director needs to know how to get good work from each individual on set and the best way to make them feel capable of that. He explained, “My feeling is that… you have to be flexible in making people feel comfortable so you can get the best out of them and they feel that they can pretty much do no wrong, and as a director, try and guide things in the way that I like to see movies go.”
Used to being able to step onto set and be led by his own directors, the change to being the person expected to guide everything was a challenge that came decades into his career, right when he thought nothing could shake him anymore.
But like so many other actors-turned-directors, the experience was a learning one. It not only showed him a lot about how to use his experiences as an actor to be a good director, but from that moment on, all of his work on other people’s sets came along with a better understanding of the bigger picture.
