Credit: Far Out / Alamy
Tue 18 August 2026 19:45, UK
One of the most ubiquitous, respected names within the Hollywood realm, it isn’t difficult to imagine swathes of actors, young and old, emerging and established, giving their right arm for an opportunity to work alongside Robert De Niro, but that doesn’t mean the process is always exceptionally harmonious.
There are a multitude of well-respected actors who, no matter how much you adore their work, are easy to imagine being rather difficult company. As beloved as Orson Welles was, for instance, you probably wouldn’t invite him out for a pint, no matter how much he seemed to enjoy Californian wine. As the American comedian John Mulaney so perfectly put it: “Famous people are weird as shit. They’re all weird”.
De Niro likely falls into that same category. He has, after all, presided over a career spanning multiple decades and portraying characters as intense and all-consuming as Travis Bickle, Jake LaMotta, and, of course, Jack Byrnes in Meet the Fockers.
Typically, you are able to amass a filmography as expansive and beloved only if you boast a specific kind of personality, and one which often might not gel easily with other performers, as Edward Norton found out on the set of 2010’s Stone.
Norton and De Niro had already worked alongside each other nine years prior, in the Frank Oz-directed heist flick The Score, but it was on Stone that Norton got to fully embrace the bizarre nature of his co-star’s process. During a promotional interview with the Washington Post, he revealed, “It’s a really nuanced and great performance from him,” before adding, in a hushed tone, “He’s so weird… He’s just so strange”.
Referring specifically to some of the more vulnerable, emotive scenes in that admittedly forgettable crime-thriller, Norton went on, “I think there are so many actors who would literalise these things or overplay them. But he underplays them to the point where it feels so real and so uncomfortable to me”.
To be fair to De Niro, the reason for his perceived strangeness, in the eyes of Edward Norton at least, is more to do with the complexities and talents of his acting process, rather than his own personality. Nevertheless, this oddity should perhaps come as no surprise, given the extent of his filmography, sure, and particularly his penchant for working with directors as prolific and perfectionist as Martin Scorsese, for instance.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
You don’t get to work on films as legendary as Taxi Driver without being able to provide some unique take on the more emotionally demanding moments of performance. “I don’t think there’s ever been anybody who’s better at expressing things with fragments,” Norton continued in his assessment of his co-star.
“With almost no words. It’s almost like words are an impediment to him, and the whole expression of it comes through his inability to talk about it rather than his ability to talk about it,” he concluded, summarising the kind of unspeakable appeal that has kept Robert De Niro’s acting career afloat for upwards of five decades.
Weirdo or not, it goes without saying, he is among the greatest actors Hollywood has ever produced.
