The star Paul Thomas Anderson calls “the most talented actor out there”
Fewer directors in the world of modern cinema can claim to have worked with as many movie stars as Paul Thomas Anderson. The director behind such 21st-century classics as There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, Anderson has worked with Adam Sandler, Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Bradley Cooper, Tom Cruise, John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Despite being one of the greatest directors in the contemporary industry, however, Anderson has never won an Academy Award for his contributions to the silver screen. With that being said, he has helped several of his stars gain Oscars recognition, with the lead and supporting actors of his movies often being nominated for awards at the annual Hollywood event.
Although he has worked with some of the industry’s greatest acting minds, there remains a number of stars the director would love to work with that he hasn’t yet had the chance to. Anderson revealed one such actor in an interview with The Guardian back in 2003, telling the publication, “Well I’d really love to work with Robert De Niro”.
The interview may have been conducted two decades ago, but Anderson has still been able to pin down the actor for collaboration, with De Niro preferring to work with the likes of Martin Scorsese and David O.Russell.
Elaborating about his wishes to work with the actor, Anderson adds: “He’s still the most talented actor out there. Maybe he makes some bad choices, which can be frustrating. On the one hand, you want to say, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ On the other, you can’t get mad at him for wanting to work, because most actors would be murderers if they weren’t working”.
De Niro was once, undoubtedly, one of Hollywood’s greatest actors, earning Oscars for his performances in such classic movies as Raging Bull and Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather: Part II, but in the 21st century, he has taken a number of more curious mainstream roles. Such is what Anderson alludes to with the actor’s “bad choices”, notoriously damaging his iconic star persona with roles in films like The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Showtime and Godsend.
Very much still at the very top of his game in the industry, there’s still plenty of time for Anderson to cast De Niro in a leading role in a forthcoming project, he certainly wouldn’t have felt out of place in the director’s 2021 LA odyssey Licorice Pizza. Take a look at the trailer for the movie below.
