Acting legend Robert De Niro has worked alongside many actors over the years, from Al Pacino to Anne Hathaway…
But it seems there’s one actress that left him “freaked out” by her bizarre acting methods.
According to reports, Aubrey Plaza came across as a little too intense while they were working on the set of Dirty Grandpa.
What she did will leave you shocked!
Here’s the full story…
Now, Robert De Niro gained big-screen prominence for his portrayal of typically violent and abrasive characters.
While later in his career he became known for playing comical depictions of grumpy old men, De Niro rose to fame for playing not so likable characters.
De Niro is the son of 2 Greenwich Village artists…
Who were widely respected in the art industry.
After appearing in a string of stage shows as a child, the star dropped out of school at age sixteen to study at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting.
With his mother’s permission, the actor-to-be took the money she had saved for college and put it toward launching his acting career.
At first, it seemed performance wasn’t all that appealing to De Niro…
After being accepted at New York’s prestigious High School of Music and Art aged 10, the star reportedly felt overwhelmed and unprepared for the intense and competitive nature of the industry and switched to a standard public school after just a few days.
De Niro wasn’t too interested in academics, however.
The star joined a pretty tame Italian street gang that dubbed him “Bobby Milk,” believed to be in reference to his pale complexion.
His time in the gang no doubt laid down his roots for being able to skillfully portray Italian Mobsters on the big screen.
Including the likes of The Wedding Party (1969), and The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971).
But it wasn’t until his performance in Bang the Drum Slowly in 1973 that he gained real mainstream success.
That same year, De Niro starred in Mean Streets, marking his first collaboration with director Martin Scorsese, with whom he would do some of his most celebrated work.
He was widely considered to be one of the best actors of his time…
And we have to agree!
After seeing his work, director Francis Ford Coppola, whose movie The Godfather had bagged the lucrative Academy Award for best picture, got in touch.
Coppola offered De Niro the iconic part of Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II (1974) — a role that earned him a best-supporting actor Oscar and firmly cemented him as an international star.
The star opened the decade with Goodfellas, yet another acclaimed gangster flick from Scorsese.
But as we made our way through the ’00s, the actor’s work took a bit of a change in tone.
In 2012, we saw De Niro play the father of a mentally ill man in Silver Linings Playbook.
This was soon followed by the comedy The Big Wedding and The Intern in 2013, to name a few.
However, his movie Dirty Grandpa was the one that really stuck in the actor’s mind.
In the 2016 film, De Niro worked alongside Zac Efron in a comedy about a lawyer (Efron) who drives his grandfather (De Niro) to Florida for spring break.
The movie also stars Aubrey Plaza, playing Lenore, and Zoey Deutch, playing Shadia in supporting roles.
In the movie, we learn that Aubrey Plaza’s character is obsessed with wanting to sleep with De Niro’s character Dick Kelly, and it seems her method acting left him a little “freaked out.”
Plaza opened up about the role at the London Film Festival’s ScreenTalk this week, revealing more about their awkward encounters on set.
“I didn’t have time to get to know him, he shows up in a puff of smoke and there’s no chatting at the water cooler,” she explained. “By the time he’d show up, I’m in character. My character had one goal: to have s*x with him. I was acting totally insane as the character because we were about to shoot. I don’t think he understood that wasn’t me. You’d think he would because he’s an actor and an amazing one.”
She admitted: “At first I think I came on really strong. I did some questionable things I wouldn’t do anymore.”
In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel back in 2016, shortly after the film came out, she also revealed that director Dan Mazer was behind one of the moments that left De Niro “freaked out.”
She explained that during one scene on set Mazer told her to suck on De Niro’s nipples, but when the time came, the actor began “batting [Plaza] away.”
Shockingly, Mazer later told her: “Bob does not like his nipple area paid attention to. So don’t do that.”
She recalled thinking at the time: “Great, well now he thinks that I wanted to do that.”
Then in another interview with Seth Meyers, she shared that her method of madness finally broke the ice between them.
She said: “I didn’t know him, we’d never talked, and I was really scared of working with him… but I was like, ‘I’m gonna do something really crazy’, and I took a real sl*tty picture of myself in my trailer, in character, and then I printed it out and I put it in a book of zen Buddhism.
“And then I slipped it under his trailer door with a little note that said, ‘Happy shooting,’ or something, and then I waited.”
She then waited over a week before she heard anything from the actor, and began to regret her decision.
However, after a week, he “just casually came over to me and he was like, ‘I got your book…’ I put the picture on page four and he was like, ‘I only got to page four, but it was very good,’ and then he walked away.”
Luckily, it looks like there are no hard feelings!