Robert De Niro On How Richard Dreyfuss Took His Half in ‘The Goodbye Woman’theinsiderinsight

Robert De Niro is trying again on his profession. 

De Niro, 80, and Quentin Tarantino, 61, appeared on the 2024 Tribeca Competition’s De Niro Con on Friday, June 14, for a screening of their 1997 film Jackie Brown. After the screening, the veteran actor opened up about being fired from a venture within the Nineteen Seventies. 

“I shot for about two weeks. It was the worst,” De Niro mentioned of his time on the set of the 1977 romantic comedy The Goodbye Woman — solely then the manufacturing was titled Bogart Slept Right here. 

He was changed by Richard Dreyfuss, and the script was rewritten. After the title change, the rom-com turned the movement image that followers comprehend it as in the present day.

The story of how De Niro left the venture has been reported up to now, together with in Shawn Levy’s 2014 biography De Niro: A Life.

On Friday, the actor mentioned there was solely “perhaps 3 times in my life I’ve ever had that type of expertise with [a] director,” referring to working with director Mike Nichols. 

He clarified that even in these previous cases, they have been performs, and that he by no means had such an expertise on the set of a movie. 

“I used to be sitting in my camper and you’re feeling this dread of simply, simply not working,” De Niro recalled. He mentioned he occurred to listen to a few of the crew stroll by outdoors of his trailer and say, “He is simply not humorous.”

“That is electrical. I could not have felt worse at that second,” De Niro mentioned.  

The Goodfellas expertise mentioned that about three days later, he acquired a name from Nichols with the director expressing that he was headed in a special course for the manufacturing. 

“One way or the other he mentioned, ‘I believe we’ll finish it,’” De Niro recalled. 

In accordance with De Niro, the choice wasn’t a straightforward one for Nichols. “He mentioned he felt horrible. He was actually upset,” he mentioned. 

The Irishman expertise was additionally keen to try to resolve the scenario earlier than it obtained to the purpose of discovering a brand new actor and rewriting the script. 

“I used to be even going to supply a few of my wage for holding us going for one more week in rehearsal to try to preserve it going,” De Niro mentioned. “I do not know if I mentioned that to him.”

“It by no means occurred,” he continued. “They obtained Richard Dreyfuss, they rewrote the script and retitled it.”

Nonetheless, De Niro appears to be a fan of the completed product, which was directed by Herbert Ross and was nominated for Greatest Image on the Oscars.

“Richard was nice, great in it. And he gained an Academy Award really for that half,” he advised the viewers.

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As for Jackie Brown, De Niro costarred alongside Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton, Michael Bowen and Chris Tucker. The film follows a flight attendant named Jackie Brown (Grier, 75) who’s pulled right into a federal investigation into unlawful gun gross sales by Jackson’s character Ordell; De Niro performs one in all Ordell’s accomplices, Louis.

De Niro Con is operating from now by way of June 16 through the Tribeca Competition.