I laughed, and said, ‘Of course. He’s Robert De Niro!’ And he said, ‘But he was wearing a disguise.’ And I said, ‘Marty, he was wearing glasses.’”
He Doesn’t Want To Talk To You
He Doesn’t Want To Talk To You
Photo: Warner Bros
Like some other great actors, De Niro suffers the contradiction of loving an art that gets him worldwide exposure while seriously disliking worldwide exposure. For a 1987 Vanity Fair profile, De Niro’s former secretary, Trixie Bourne, who also worked for Steve McQueen and Jack Nicholson, explained various ways she diverted those looking to speak to the actor (including the reporter).
“Mr. De Niro is traveling” was Bourne’s default response, though she would also use “Mr. De Niro is out of the country,” “I’ll have to get back to you,” or “We’ll see about that.” Apparently, De Niro once accidentally answered his own phone, and mumbled “Yeah, hello . . . this is Bob. I’ll put Trixie on.”
According to a friend of De Niro’s, “Bobby never answers his own phone. And he calls you—you never call him.”
Eventually, Trixie had to keep it real with Patricia Bosworth, who wrote the Vanity Fair piece: “Mr. De Niro will probably never talk to you, but he is giving you permission to talk to his friends.”
