10 Crazy Actor Truths We Just Learned
1. Robert De Niro Bluntly Turned Down Gangs Of New York & The Departed
There's a very small, elite club of actors big enough to turn down a filmmaker as legendary and accomplished as the peerless Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro evidently counts himself among them.
Scorsese and De Niro have collaborated on 10 feature films over the last 50 (!) years, but that number could've actually been even higher if De Niro didn't reject Marty on two occasions.
While promoting their new film Killers of the Flower Moon at the Cannes Film Festival, Scorsese revealed to Deadline that De Niro said no to parts in both Gangs of New York and The Departed.
More to the point, when the director approached him about possibly appearing in the films, De Niro rebuffed him with an off-the-cuff "Nah" each time.
That might sound rude to the layperson, yet it's important to remember the personal and professional shorthand that the pair must've fostered over a half-century of not only working together but being close friends.
All the same, you won't find many other actors willing to turn down the GOAT filmmaker quite so coolly.