Robert De Niro on Acting - Michael Parkinson Interview [1981]

alex guinness sponsored on the show that i asked him what he had to do before he got into a character and he said he had to get the walk right right but you actually you research them don't you go and live like them before you before you do the part well and what he says is very true for me too because um uh some actors work cerebrally some work uh physically i like to work physically a lot of times it helps me feel like i mean clothes putting on certain clothes can give you a feeling of of another character um which it does to actual people who are characters it helps them identify with the role that they want to play in life be a businessman or whatever they want you know and uh one thing can give it to you a walk can give it to you just that one walk you can play that one thing through a whole play or a movie and it can do it uh so i agree with that you know the point i was going to make of course was i do the other two yeah i mean when you did a taxi driver for instance i mean you went and actually worked as a cabbage didn't you and yeah yeah did did anybody ever recognize you then only once or twice once i had an actor who wanted me to take him to the airport and he recognized me so the whole thing was blown because i couldn't you know all we could do was talk about acting and i didn't want him to pay me and and uh but he insisted on paying i said okay paying me no tip though you know and the other time i just some people got out of the cab and they i had i looked at his eyes i you know you have a plaque with your name on it i turned that around so nobody see the name which a lot of cabbies do anyway and i looked i looked him in the eye and the guy recognized me by the way and just said you were in godfather too he recognized me from that and that was it otherwise people don't even look at you they don't know you know it's like a waiter in a restaurant they don't you know you don't exist in a way that was kind of and in new york new york as well you mean you actually learned how to play the instrument the sax didn't you although i'm even into dumb because you could have mimed it because the music wasn't yours no it wasn't mine it was done by uh george except that uh i wanted to learn the fingering which i did and i learned how to play everything in the movie uh it wasn't the whole point was not to to be to learn how to play the sax to be you know i could never play it as well as as he as he did or or like jake fights and so on but the movies are illusion are an illusion and uh the whole point is to be able to recreate this without looking is it without looking like a fool i didn't want to look like i didn't know what i was doing because when i look at a movie i see you know somebody with a fingering for example they're all out of you know they're wrong i look like an actor playing a judgment edition and i want to throw it away the point is to learn it to throw it away the way a person who actually does know it they don't they don't over emphasize it's like an actor who overacts because they don't really know the situation and don't have the confidence to just be them you know be straight robert you know at the top of the tree now um you've got to very strongly tip for a second academy award yet i do know for a certain fact that you don't like the the thing about the the traditional trappings of being a film star do you some ways yeah you don't like them well only that uh as far as the um being recognized as certain situations you like a certain amount of privacy and uh no but i i i enjoy it don't get me wrong i mean um certain things are dragged but that's part of it i have no complaints whatsoever what about your next project what you're going to do that's called the king of comedy and i'm i'm doing it with jerry lewis and marty scorsese is going to direct it and it's about a guy who kidnaps uh someone like yourself the chat show yeah to get on uh get on the show and do his act which turns out to be very good you've not been doing any research while we've been sitting here no i'm just thinking no no no you haven't all right well all success without all success too with with raging bull as i say um i do hope it gets a wider audience because it is a magnificent movie it's not what you call family entertainment but of its kind it's one of the best movies i've ever seen robert de niro

Channel: TubiViral

Views: 154,585

Keywords: robert de niro interview, robert de niro on acting, robert de niro michael parkinson, robert de niro raging bull, robert de niro king of comedy, Michael Parkinson, Michael Parkinson interview, Michael Parkinson BBC, Michael Parkinson BBC interview

Id: CUQEiJBRN-Q

Length: 4min 14sec (254 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021