Why Robert De Niro swore he’d never again set foot in France: “I’m well beyond furious”
In late 1997 and early 1998, Robert De Niro spent several months in France shooting Ronin, the acclaimed John Frankenheimer action thriller. The production went through Paris, moved to the historic Arles Amphitheatre, and finished with stints in Cannes, La Turbie, and Villefranche. Unfortunately for De Niro, though, before the shoot even concluded, he’d sworn he’d never again set foot in the country after becoming caught up in a legal scandal that rocked him to his core.
It all started going pear-shaped for De Niro from almost the moment he touched down in Paris for the shoot. He was quickly swept up by authorities, who subjected him to nine hours of intense questioning in front of prosecutor Frederic Nguyen. The bewildered star was understandably shell-shocked but repeatedly denied any involvement in what Nguyen was investigating.
You see, Nguyen was on the trail of a high-class prostitution ring operating in Paris and had already jailed two suspects over it. De Niro’s name had been thrown into the fray in one of two ways, depending on which reports are to be believed. Either one of the prostitutes mentioned him being one of her clients, or his name was discovered in an address book found during the investigation. Whatever the case, De Niro categorically denied any involvement in the scandal.
The star’s lawyer, Georges Kiejman, soon went on the offensive, telling the French press, “I can categorically state—indeed Mr De Niro has authorised me to do so—that he has never in his life ever paid to have any woman.” He also accused the judge of breaking the law by allowing De Niro’s name to leak to the press in connection with the sordid case. In addition, the judge failed to issue him a summons, meaning he was illegally detained by the police.
The iconic Goodfellas star was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, but he made sure to register his disgust with the entire country of France for what he’d been put through. He told Le Monde newspaper, “I will never return to France. I will advise my friends against going to France.”
Ironically, De Niro had been awarded the Legion of Honour in 1997, one of France’s most prestigious accolades, but he was so incensed that he told the country to take it back. He raged: “Send your Legion of Honour back to the ambassador as soon as possible. I don’t see any reason why I should hang on to that thing which comes from a country which flouts its own motto ‘liberty, equality and fraternity.’ I’m well beyond what one might call furious.”
Amazingly, De Niro even aimed a vitriolic attack at Nguyen, the prosecutor who had the temerity to detain him for so long. “I don’t know what his problem is, but he really has one,” he said. The star theorised that Nguyen simply disliked the rich and famous and mistakenly saw himself as the “saviour of badly treated girls.” He even claimed the French police were embarrassed about Nguyen’s methods, but he didn’t elaborate on that point.
All in all, it was a very ugly, unsavoury situation. De Niro told Le Monde that, even though he had assured his ailing mother and pregnant wife that he hadn’t done anything wrong, he worried that the general public would adopt a “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” attitude toward the scandal. Indeed, his reputation did take a slight ding in the aftermath.
Ultimately, though, De Niro’s vow to never darken France’s proverbial door again proved difficult to stick to. In 2011, he was invited to serve as jury president at the Cannes Film Festival, and any beef he had with the country didn’t seem to be a factor anymore. A happy De Niro gushed, “The Cannes Film Festival is a rare opportunity for me as it is one of the oldest and one of the best in the world.”
