“Bobby is a goddamn chameleon!” cried Brian De Palma, who directed his extravagant portrayal of Al Capone in The Untouchables. His ability to transform himself from a jittery street punk into a wisecracking musician or an elegant tycoon was absolutely magical-all the more so because he hid behind his characters and refused to reveal his own elusive persona. Sometime during the 1970s, Robert De Niro burst forth as the outstanding actor of the decade. This article, then, is a shadow portrait of a man who is considered one of the finest film actors in the world but who has also been called a public recluse in the grand tradition of Marlon Brando. He was in Russia in July, serving as jury president at the Fifteenth International Moscow Film Festival.
He appeared at the party following the premiere of The Untouchables in New York, and several weeks later I saw him speak briefly at a presentation honoring Martin Scorsese given by Mayor Koch in the garden of Gracie Mansion. He’s that giving.”ĭe Niro was actually more visible by far this summer than he usually is. If he’d let himself, he’d be eaten alive by people. This guy is so sensitive-he has antennae out for everybody. He is always watching, observing.”īurt Young, his co-star last year in the play Cuba and His Teddy Bear, said, “We’d leave the theater together, see? And the fans would rush up for my autograph, and then they’d ask, ‘When’s Robert De Niro coming out?’ And the sweet sucker’s standin’ right next to me!” Young defends De Niro’s need to be invisible in public: “He’s gotta be. “People who don’t know him think he’s somewhere else, but he is very much there-soaking up new characters, new situations. “He is simply not show business,” said Charles Maryan, who directed him at the American Place Theatre in Billy Bailey and The Great American Refrigerator in 1972. So only his close friends know that his black girlfriend, Toukie Smith, has dyed blond hair and runs a catering service or that he is the only son of two artists or that Madonna and Sean Penn and Bob Dylan were among the guests at the birthday party he threw for himself in his New York loft last year.ĭe Niro’s friends accept his need to be private, and deny that his reclusive-ness is some sort of deliberate star trip. Always De Niro has categorically refused to speak about his private life.
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