Robert De Niro takes on hospitality industry at the helm of Nobu empire

Robert De Niro attends the opening of Nobu's new restaurant in Doha, Qatar. (Nobu Doha, Four Seasons)

It’s been a very busy year for Robert De Niro, who at 72 shows no signs of slowing down. The two-time Oscar winner logged 165,000 miles of air travel in 2015. Maybe he, and not George Clooney, should have starred in “Up in the Air.”
But De Niro’s miles weren’t all acting-related.

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The expansive rooftop of Nobu Doha affords great city views in a luxurious setting. (Nobu Doha, Four Seasons)

In addition to appearing in four movies – including “Joy,” which hits theaters on Christmas Day – he continued to be a player in the hospitality business. When the makeup comes off, the real-life De Niro is a partner with chef Nobu Matsuhisa and former film producer Meir Teper in the luxurious Nobu restaurant and hotel chain.

Nobu opened a hotel in Manila and two restaurants – in the Moscow area and in Doha, Qatar – this year, and De Niro found time to attend all the openings.

Nobu Doha, on the shore of the Arabian Gulf at the Four Seasons, celebrated its grand opening last month, five years later than planned. “Its construction process was very long, because it was very unique to design: on the water, inside/outside, two bars, smoking/no-smoking and rooftop,” Matsuhisa said of the eight-year undertaking.

While Nobu Doha, with 284 seats, is the brand’s largest restaurant, its shell-like design provides intimate spaces as well as sweeping views of the gulf and Doha’s chic cityscape. At the restaurant’s grand-opening celebration, where 400 guests seemingly all wanted — and got — selfies with him, De Niro and Matsuhisa found some refuge in those nooks to sample the sushi and champagne.

But De Niro wasn’t in Doha for long. Two days after the restaurant’s formal launch he was outside Moscow for the opening of the second Nobu in the area – Nobu Crocus City, which imported a wood oven from Australia to craft Crocus City-specific plates like sea bass with mint salsa in addition to the usual Nobu staples.

On his first visit to Moscow since 2009, De Niro got some local media attention when he was asked at the inaugural gala if he – like boxer Roy Jones Jr. and actor Gerard Depardieu – would like to request Russian citizenship. “Maybe,” he replied, which suggests that he may want to add “diplomat” to his resume someday.

Nobu now has 32 restaurants and two hotels, with further expansion slated for 2016. It recently announced plans to open a restaurant in the West End section of Washington, D.C., late next year. “They have the president of the United States. I’d like to feed him,” Matsuhisa said.

While the new restaurants received positive reviews, Nobu Hotel Manila was named the worst new luxury hotel of 2015 by Luxury Travel Intelligence. The members-only travel-advisory’s co-founder told Fortune that the first Nobu hotel in Asia “seems to be suffering from poor management.” Back in May, when the 321-room hotel opened, De Niro told reporters, “To me, you have to do more than lend your name, you gotta be there in order to just be more a part of it and really believe in it.” So there may be more trips to Manila in De Niro’s future.

If there are, it will just mean more time in the air. While in Doha – in the midst of a 14-day stretch that included stops in Macau, New York, London, and Moscow – De Niro talked with us about his travel preferences.

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A traditional sake ceremony at the opening of De Niro's new Nobu restaurant. (Nobu Doha, Four Seasons)

FoxNews.com: What’s your routine the night before a trip?
Robert De Niro: The toughest thing is just packing what you think you’re going to need.
FoxNews.com: What is it that you think you need usually then? What are the essentials?
Robert De Niro: I sometimes think that if I’m stuck in a place longer for whatever reason, then I might need more of this, more of that, reading material, clothes. Taking more of everything just to make sure I’m not in that situation.
FoxNews.com: What do you wear on a flight?
Robert De Niro: Comfortable clothes.
FoxNews.com: Jeans, t-shirts, that sort of stuff?
Robert De Niro: Exactly.
FoxNews.com: What do you prefer: window, aisle?
Robert De Niro: Window.
Matsuhisa: Private.
De Niro: [Laughing] That’s best, of course.
FoxNews.com: What’s your favorite way to pass the time in an airport or waiting for a connection?
Robert De Niro: Just to get through everything as quickly as possible so I don’t have idle time.
FoxNews.com: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever had on an airplane?
Robert De Niro: Stale nuts.
FoxNews.com:  How about the best?
Robert De Niro: Fresh nuts.
FoxNews.com:  What cities do you visit the most?
Robert De Niro: I’ve been to Doha at least five or six times. LA, Paris, London.
FoxNews.com:  What’s the first thing you do when you enter a hotel room?

Robert De Niro: Well it’s hard when you enter a hotel room when your whole time thing is turned around. Say you’re arriving in the Far East and there’s a 12-hour turnaround. You’re arriving in their morning but it’s your middle of the night. Or the middle of their day, but the middle of your night. Or vice versa.

And in my case, it’s just people wanting to help you get settled and this and that. But you just want to go to sleep, but you might not be able to because you’ve got to get settled, get certain things done, and then you got to start the day.

I don't exactly love Pacino and De Niro. I'm not quite sure why everyone does

Among the many inviolable rules of film criticism - that Nic Cage is a genius; that Terminator 2 was better than the first Terminator; that Kevin Costner will never, ever not be absurd – the most inviolable of all centres on Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, the holy trinity that, whether you like their films or not, must be bowed to as towering luminaries.

There’s no question that we owe these guys a debt of gratitude, not only for the mob movies of the last 40 years, but for the equally strong tradition of name-dropping Marty or Bob as a sign a young actor has made it. Old guys whose paths they once crossed nurse the anecdotes like gold. Cameras at awards ceremonies close in on their faces, which are often baffled in the manner of a monarch so grand he can’t make sense of the mortals around him.

I’ve had cause to think about this reverence twice in the last week: first when Kyle Smith wrote a piece in the New York Post claiming that women, to their detriment, don’t get Goodfellas; and then again after a run-in with De Niro, the star of that movie, who is promoting a new film. (Our interview was brief. De Niro was either out of sorts, or, after a lifetime of being toadied to by everyone he meets, is simply too celebrated to conduct a normal conversation.)

Smith’s piece was roundly mocked for being silly and reductive, and, sure, lots of women love Goodfellas. After re-watching it, however, I’m not one of them – and if I never have to sit through the Godfather again, either, I’m pretty sure I’ll survive.

These films, so often cited in best-of lists and lip-synched to by legions of fans, are long-winded, dimly lit and over-rated. And while their narrative arcs might be great (guy kills other guy, gets killed by first guy’s friends, who kill each other ad infinitum until the Feds yell “Stop!”) and the acting convincing, they are also jerk-off movies – in this case, for the kind of man who mourns the end of the age of machismo – passing themselves off as profound or insightful.

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I don’t want to be too much of a buzzkill about all this: mobster tales are fun in the way that cartoons are fun. What I struggle with (which, like the verb “ to find problematic”, has become the polite way to say “loathe”) is the way that mobster movies invite us to believe that they are deeply meaningful in a way that excuses the heroic portrayal of their gratuitous, male-centered violence. Years ago, I remember running into a friend after she’d been at her boyfriend’s for dinner. “He made me watch Once Upon A Time In America”, she said miserably of the Sergio Leone love-letter to New York’s violent past. “That horrible rape scene seems to go on forever.”

All actors become proxies for the roles that they play, and so Pacino and De Niro are, one suspects, loved less for their acting ability than for their status as men who pound heads into tables. The wives in these movies always get pushed down at some point, too, without in any way denting the likeability of the hero. (This happened in the recent James Brown biopic, Get On Up, in which the soul singer casually batters his wife and goes on to win the movie.) But presenting a slightly more complex understanding of violence – let alone domestic violence – doesn’t have to be limited to a Movie of the Week or a Ken Loach vehicle, and actors worth universal acclaim and admiration should be able to portray violent characters as anti-heroes, not just heroes.

Calling out movie stars for self-importance is like asking a dog why it scratches its fleas - it’s the nature of the beast. But in the case of Pacino-De Niro-Scorsese, do we have to collude with them in such slavish devotion to the work? Because even if you love Goodfellas and the Godfather, Little Fockers and Grudge Match should act as a natural break to hero worship and bring you resoundingly back to your senses.

JR Asks and Robert De Niro Agrees: ‘Ellis’ Is Born

An epic snowstorm; permission to shoot on a historic site that had been closed to the public for 60 years; and the availability and willingness of Robert De Niro: those were the impossible ingredients that the artist JR needed to make his short film. For most first-time filmmakers, the bar would seem too high. 

But JR, the Frenchman known for his large-scale street photography who has lately branched off into other artistic fields, like ballet, pulled it off. The result is a 14-minute film, “Ellis,” set in the formerly abandoned hospital on Ellis Island, which was once a way station for immigrants. It’s also the site of JR’s recent installation “Unframed – Ellis Island,” in which he and his team pasted archival images of immigrants in the very rooms they passed through during the great wave of migration in the early 20th century.

The film, with a scripted voiceover written by the Oscar winner Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump”) and music by the French songwriter Woodkid, follows Mr. De Niro as he walks through the hospital, which was abandoned in 1954 and stands as a ruin, with broken windows and rusted lockers. “It was very eerie,” Mr. De Niro said at the film’s New York premiere on Friday on the Lower East Side. It will run Wednesday-Sunday through Nov. 8 in a pop-up exhibition sponsored by Galerie Perrotin, JR’s dealer, at 130 Orchard Street. (His photos and some works on wood will also be on display.)

Instead of posting the short online, JR, a star of social media, is offering to send a copy of the film free to people who want to screen it in small groups. (Details are here.) He is also organizing free showings in London, Los Angeles, San Francisco and at Miami Art Basel. “The idea of the film is not to make any money, but just try to get people to see it,” he said. 

JR was first inspired to make the film as a way to document the crumbling hospital. “A lot of the places you see in the film have decayed so much, you can’t see them anymore,” he said Friday. He also wanted to highlight its connection to the current global battles over migration, by including photos of contemporary undocumented United States immigrants, scattered among the collages of faces from a century ago.

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Robert De Niro on the set of "Ellis," a short film by the artist JR.Credit

For Mr. De Niro, who said in an interview that he wasn’t sure if any of his family members had come through Ellis Island, the motivation was simpler. “JR asked me to do it and Jane asked me to do it,” he said, referring to Jane Rosenthal, his partner in Tribeca Film, “and I said O.K.” He and JR have collaborated on several projects, though it has been years since Mr. De Niro agreed to do a short. “I think JR is very personable and likable and smart, and generates enthusiasm,” he said.

Traveling to Ellis Island is an undertaking, involving passports and ferries, and Mr. De Niro arrived with little advance notice, for just half a day, from the set of the David O. Russell film “Joy” in Boston last winter. The small “Ellis” crew scrambled. There was no time for rehearsal, but the snow was fresh. “Everything could have gone wrong, and that’s it, and there would be no movie,” JR said. Instead, “we got really focused.”

“And there was Bob, in the middle of a storm,” he added. “It was magical.”

Robert De Niro American actor

Robert De Niro,  (born August 17, 1943, New York City, New York, U.S.), American actor famous for his uncompromising portrayals of violent and abrasive characters and, later in his career, for his comic depictions of cranky old men.

The son of two Greenwich Village artists, De Niro dropped out of school at age 16 to study at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting. After working in a few Off-Off-Broadway plays, he appeared in his first film, Brian De Palma’s The Wedding Party (filmed 1963, released 1969). Thereafter he appeared in several minor films, the most notable being The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971). It was not until his performance in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) that he was widely recognized as an excellent actor. Mean Streets (1973) marked De Niro’s first association with director Martin Scorsese, with whom he would do some of his most celebrated work. Director Francis Ford Coppola, whose massively popular The Godfather (1972) had won the Academy Award for best picture, was so impressed by De Niro in Mean Streets that he offered the actor the part of young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II (1974), forgoing even a screen test. De Niro’s brilliant take on the part that was created by Marlon Brando in the first Godfather film earned him a best supporting actor Oscar and made him an international star.


Following The Godfather, Part II, De Niro worked with some of cinema’s most noted directors in such films as Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), Elia Kazan’s The Last Tycoon (1976), and Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978), the last one receiving the Oscar for best picture. But it was his films with Scorsese for which De Niro acquired a reputation for masterfully portraying extremely dark and unappealing figures. He received an Oscar nomination for his role as the isolated and violent Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) and won the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980). Known for his intense role preparation, De Niro spent weeks driving a taxi in New York City before filming Taxi Driver, and he gained more than 50 pounds (about 23 kg) to portray La Motta. By the end of the 1970s, he was widely considered one of the best actors of his generation.


In the 1980s he appeared in a series of box office failures that have nevertheless become cult favourites. Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1983), which offered a desolate look at the hazards of celebrity, won critical praise but little public interest, whereas Sergio Leone’s epic Once upon a Time in America (1984) suffered from postproduction studio interference, as did Terry Gilliam’s futuristic satire Brazil (1985).
De Niro also performed in more conventional films during that era, including True Confessions (1981), Falling in Love (1984), The Mission (1986), and De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987). He revealed a talent for comedy in Midnight Run (1988) and won some of the best notices of his career for his depiction of a catatonic patient in Awakenings (1990). GoodFellas (1990) reunited De Niro with Scorsese for a brutal look at organized crime. Most critics agreed that Scorsese and De Niro had returned to form, but two further collaborations, Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995), were met with mixed reviews.


De Niro later appeared in Michael Mann’s crime thriller Heat (1995), which pitted him against actor Al Pacino. He continued to explore his comedic side in such films as the satirical Wag the Dog (1997); Analyze This (1999) and its sequel, Analyze That (2002); and Meet the Parents (2000) and its sequels, Meet the Fockers (2004) and Little Fockers (2010). In 2008 De Niro reteamed with Pacino in the police drama Righteous Kill, and the following year he starred in Everybody’s Fine, portraying a widower who discovers various truths about his adult children. He later took supporting roles in the thrillers Machete (2010) and Limitless (2011), the action drama Killer Elite (2011), and the ensemble romantic comedy New Year’s Eve (2011).

In 2012 De Niro starred as a destitute writer reconnecting with his estranged son in the drama Being Flynn and played another paternal role in the seriocomic Silver Linings Playbook. The latter film earned him his first Oscar nomination in more than two decades. In The Family (2013) De Niro starred as a mobster turned informant whose family moves to France in the witness protection program. He then teamed with Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, and Kevin Kline in the buddy comedy Last Vegas (2013). De Niro’s later credits include Grudge Match (2013), in which he and Sylvester Stallone played superannuated boxers who reunite for one last fight, and the workplace comedy The Intern (2015), in which he featured as the title character opposite Anne Hathaway.

In addition to acting, De Niro also directed several films. In 1993 he made his directorial debut with A Bronx Tale, a movie about the Mafia set in the 1960s. He later directed the highly acclaimed The Good Shepherd (2006), which centres on the origins of the CIA and the compromises made by an agent over the span of his career. In 2009 De Niro was named a Kennedy Center honoree, and two years later he received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement).

Robert De Niro to NYT reporter: ‘Ya got the part, kid’

“Ya got the part, kid.”

It’s safe to say few journalists have rarely heard those words, at least not from Robert De Niro.

But that’s the case for New York Times reporter Diana Henriques, author of a book about Bernie Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme, “The Wizard of Lies.” She took a buyout from the newspaper in 2011 but still writes for it.

HBO is adapting her book, with De Niro starring as Madoff, and she auditioned with him several months ago, Chris Roush reports for Talking Biz News.

…In June, and he grilled her for two hours about his mannerisms, his laugh, his sense of humor, and his relative closeness to his two sons.

De Niro and his casting director liked how it went well enough to ask her back the next day to read a scene with him. According to the journalist:

The next day, De Niro met us in the same small office. We sat knee to knee; he had a script to follow, I was relying on memory. But about a minute into a 5-minute scene, he seemed to just drop out of his own head and into Bernie’s. It was a surreal, goosebumpy moment — and he’s barely started on building his characterization!

We finished the scene, looks were exchanged among Levinson, Chenoweth and De Niro. After a bit of vague chit-chat, I got blunt (not an investigative reporter for nothing!) So, I said, what’s the decision? DeNiro gave me his patented smirk: “Ya got the part, kid.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story left the space out of Robert De Niro’s last name. It has been corrected.

David O. Russell’s Next Project Featuring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro

Last week, the somewhat confusing trailer for Joy, David O. Russell's latest feature film starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro was released. If that trio of names sound slightly familiar, it should for two reasons: (1) Silver Linings Playbook and (2) American Hustle.

While the trailer is stylish and J-Law looks beautiful, viewers have been left wondering on several points. Does the movie take place in a snow globe? Does Jennifer Lawrence get involved in a infomercial ring gone bad? What is she drawing? Does Bradley Cooper have a lead role? 

We may not yet know the answers, but what we do know here at Slate is this: Joy is not the last project David O. Russell will helm starring this group of Oscar winners and noms. (Better luck next time, Cooper.)

The video above is a sneak peek at the horror film coming this fall.

Juliette Lewis steps out in figure-hugging Aztec dress as she reveals Robert De Niro once told her off for 'disrespecting writers'

It's been 24 years since he attempted to rape and murder her in the movie Cape Fear.

But Juliette Lewis bears no ill will against Robert De Niro, as she posted a touching birthday tribute to him on Monday.

The 42-year-old Secrets and Lies star shared a story on Instagram about an interaction she had with the screen legend to mark him turning 72.

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Well wisher: Juliette Lewis stepped out in figure-hugging Aztec dress on Monday as she posted a birthday tribute to her Cape Fear co-star Robert De Niro

'In honor of Robert De Niro's birthday I'm going to tell you a story I usually tell in acting schools; of a major lesson I learned,' she wrote beside a picture of the two Cape Fear co-stars. 

She recalled how she was in a bar in Hollywood in 1994, aged 20, when 'Bob' approached her and said she had 'done a god job' in the film Natural Born Killers.

'Yes the Master stopped to tell ME I had done a good job,' she gushed, amazed that he hadn't credited her performance to the director, or the lucky chance that she just happened to be exactly like her character in real life.

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Nice fit: The 42-year-old's figure hugging, sleeveless lilac dress which showed off her toned arms as well as her super-fit physique

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Tale: Secrets and Lies star shared a story on Instagram about an interaction she had with the screen legend to mark him turning 72

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Rising star: She recalled how she was in a bar in Hollywood in 1994, aged 20, when 'Bob' approached her and said she had 'done a god job' in the film Natural Born Killers

'So here we are Bob gives me a glorious compliment and instead of graciously accepting it, my 20 yr old insecure covered by pride- self says "Well ya know I made up like 90 per cent of what I did. I improvised and wrote scenes",' she continued, before revealing his shock response.

'Bob looked at me sternly and said, "Oh no. No don't ever disrespect the writer. Don't you ever disrespect the writer or your director. Ever."'

Lewis claimed that in that one moment she realised so much, felt like she grew by five years... and never made that mistake again.

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BS: But she revealed the screen legend slapped her down when she claimed to have made up 90 per cent of her script

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Wrist slapped: 'Oh no. No don't ever disrespect the writer. Don't you ever disrespect the writer or your director. Ever.' she recalled De Niro telling her

'I am so thankful he took the time to school a very young J Lewis,' she concluded. 'Alot of teachers I'd reject what they'd say bein so pride-ful and self protecting, But when he said it I knew exactly what he meant! Grace and respect. Lasts forever! He's a class act! #SchooledByDeNiro'.

Earlier on Monday, Juliette stepped out in a figure hugging, sleeveless, Aztec-inspired lilac dress, which showed off her toned arms as well as her super-fit physique.

The star stopped by Fred Segal in West Hollywood for some shopping and a bite of lunch. 

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Mentor: On Monday she posted a snap of the two together, claiming 'I learned so much from this man'

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Breakout: She also shared a split of the two in Cape Fear, for which both were nominated for Oscars and Golden Globes

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Creepy: The then 17-year-old even shared a kissing - and a thumb sucking - scene with De Niro