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Robert De Niro Co-Star Might Know Why He's Gone So Rubbish

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Even the most ardent De Niro fan would have to hold their hands up and admit that his recent work has been quite seriously sub-par.

We’re looking at you, ‘Dirty Grandpa’.

But his 'Goodfellas’ and 'Cape Fear’ co-star Illeana Douglas has a view on how it is that me might have descended from one of the great actors of his generation to making jokes about horse penises with Zac Efron.

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Speaking on Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast, she was asked about the decline of De Niro.

In a meandering question, Ellis proffered: “I’m constantly asked by people ‘What happened to de Niro?’ I don’t know what to say to them. They talk about De Niro walking through roles, just collecting the money, and I do think that’s true.

“I’ve heard from financiers that if you have the money De Niro will be in anything, and that he seems to just have checked out, that he knows in a way the gig is up and he’s just getting to the finish line.

“I think De Niro gets singled out as a target because of the greatness of his performances in the 70s, and that there is this kind of fall-off that really strikes something in people.”

Replying, Douglas’s view was respectful, but pretty bleak.

“I think that, and I can only comment as an outsider and having worked with him on a film like Goodfellas, the environment that was created to play and to make a work of art, that no longer exists,” she said.

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“You know, you’re talking about an environment where Marty [Scorsese] made crew members remove their watches. Where, on the set of Cape Fear, De Niro caught somebody looking at their watch and the person is yelled at, because it was like ‘we are making art’.

“And it must be very challenging to be in an environment where it’s like ‘Yeah we have an hour, let’s get this shot, let’s get this shot’, and so if nobody else cares, why should you care?

“And I understand what you mean, it’s as if we’re looking at him for some great example of what he was and I still believe it’s there, I still believe it’s in all of these great actors, but you have to create the environment for them.”

So perhaps there is hope yet.

Forthcoming De Niro projects include him playing disgraced financier Bernie Madoff in the TV movie 'The Wizard of Lies’, helmed by Barry Levinson, and Taylor Hackford’s 'The Comedian’, in which he plays an acerbic stand-up opposite Leslie Mann, Edie Falco, Harvey Keitel and Danny DeVito.

Image credits: Yahoo File/Reuters