The day De Niro joined the CIA

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10 April 2012

The making of his latest movie, the Cold War epic The Good Shepherd, was a thriller in itself for Robert De Niro. To gain better understanding of the murky world of intelligence-gathering, he persuaded a former CIA agent to take him to the corners of the globe where espionage is a way of life. In no time, he found himself in Afghanistan, face to face with a highranking member of the Taliban.

Remaining discreet about details, he says they met "one of the commanders" in "a place like no other. They showed us how they defeated the Russians. The meeting was all very cordial, over tea. I gave them $200 for a women's school, which I know they used to start it up right away." Surely an unconventional price of admission.

Though he only had one directing credit (the small-scale drama A Bronx Tale, 1993), De Niro was keen to get behind the camera again, and it had been his dream to make a film about the CIA long before he was handed the script, by Oscar-winner Eric Roth (The Insider, Munich), of The Good Shepherd. It told the story of the CIA from its beginnings as the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War to the disastrous failure of the mission at the Bay of Pigs during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"The one thing you always hear about the CIA and the KGB is that they are shadowy and ominous," De Niro, 63, tells me, hands fluttering and face bright with excitement. Sitting before me after a New York screening of the film, he is more animated than I'd expected. His shy reticence has often been commented upon, but I find no evidence today. Today, he can't stop talking.

"I've met quite a few people from both agencies and they are people like everyone else and they have feelings like everyone else. I know it sounds corny when I say it, but that was what is so interesting to me - how what they do in their profession relates to their personal life and that's what I tried to do in the movie."

The result is a riveting saga of a fictional character called Edward Wilson - an amalgam of early CIA leaders such as covert-operations specialist Richard Bissel and head of the counter-intelligence department James Angleton - played brilliantly by Matt Damon (who stepped in to replace Leonardo DiCaprio when he left to film his scenes in Martin Scorsese's The Departed).

We follow Wilson's early life at Yale, where he joined Skull & Bones, the ultra-secret society composed of bright young patrician white men that supplied the CIA with many of its early leaders. George Bush and his father were both members; so was John Kerry.

Wilson is then handpicked to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1939, and after the war (when the OSS becomes the CIA), is charged with learning the internal workings of the KGB. Meanwhile his family life with his wife (Angelina Jolie) and child suffers and ultimately his life of deceit and secrecy leads to personal tragedy.

"I took the things that supposedly happened and that we had learned, and made our own take of it," De Niro says. "It's like a mythology about the CIA. Like in acting, you have to make it your own. As much time as I spent with Jake La Motta on Raging Bull, finally Marty [Scorsese] and I had to make up our own take on what it was about him that we felt."

The Good Shepherd is not to everyone's taste and so far has been snubbed in awards nominations. It's a long and detached portrait of cold, upper-class people and many will find it too chilly. The huge star cast - De Niro himself, as General Bill Sullivan, founder of the CIA, John Turturro, Alec Baldwin, Joe Pesci, Michael Gambon, William Hurt et al - give measured, slow-burning performances, while Damon plays the character of Wilson with an icy blankness.

De Niro sounds almost anxious when he says, "I didn't want to bore the audience. But at the same time, it took time to tell certain things. You have to tell the story. I took a lot of things out of the movie because I was concerned that maybe there were too many things - hopefully I can put those back in later for an extended version or a DVD version."

Was he under pressure, then, from the film companies, Universal Pictures and Morgan Creek, to dumb things down?

"There was a tug of war with the studio [about the length], but I valued opinions from everyone. I just had to figure out what I could live with and what I feel comfortable with, what I stand by and what I am happy and proud of."

With a reported budget of $100 million, it is unlikely that The Good Shepherd will make its money back at the box office, but those film-goers who do make the effort will be rewarded with an enthralling insight into the Cold War years and the ruthlessness engaged in on both sides. The CIA comes off particularly badly. De Niro has included a brutal scene in which one agent interrogates a Russian defector while Wilson watches from behind a two-way mirror: the torture, known as "waterboarding", involves water being poured on the victim's face to simulate drowning.

"That scene was based on research," De Niro insists. "You know, intelligence is a necessary evil of sorts if it can help avoid certain situations. That doesn't give you licence to do things that are unethical, but there is a certain part of intelligence that is inherently unethical."

Was he tempted to go further with his critique of US government policy over the last century? For the first time in our interview, De Niro becomes visibly uncomfortable. He pauses just that bit too long.

"Being critical means taking a hard position on something," he says, finally, "and I prefer to see what something is all about and try to get behind it. Why people do things is more interesting to me. I want to try and understand where they are coming from."

It's that fascination with observing and investigating human behaviour that has informed De Niro's entire career. He grew up in an artistic family - both parents were visual artists - in New York City and caught the acting bug at an early age, leaving school at 16 to study with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, the acting coaches whose famous "Method" changed the face of acting in the Fifties.

De Niro was cast in no time, getting his first starring role in Brian De Palma's first film, The Wedding Party, in 1966, followed by two more De Palma movies, Greetings and Hi, Mom! After a string of small independent films, he began his happy collaboration with Martin Scorsese in Mean Streets in 1973.

The rest is history. He won his first Oscar in 1974 as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather - Part II, went into Taxi Driver in 1976, The Deer Hunter in 1978 and snatched a second Oscar for Raging Bull in 1980. Rarely has one actor starred in such a run of iconic films, and his attention to detail and commitment to the roles is the stuff of legend.

Less gloriously, he has also become notorious for the volume of his acting work. He has appeared in more than 75 films - from the masterly to the awful. He brilliantly reteamed with Scorsese in films like Goodfellas and Casino; other memorable movies include Once Upon a Time in America, Heat and The Untouchables.

But there have been many flops along the way: The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Fan, Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein, Great Expectations, 15 Minutes, Showtime, City by the Sea, Hide and Seek. It's as if he couldn't stop working and didn't care what he signed up to. He has even found a new calling in mainstream comedies such as Analyze This, Meet the Parents and their sequels.

No doubt De Niro enjoys the pay cheque: he commands $10 million a role these days. He certainly has plenty of overheads: five children from three different partners (including his current wife, Grace Hightower), owns three restaurants in New York City (including celebrity haunt Nobu), runs a prosperous production company, Tribeca Productionsand the increasingly influential annual Tribeca Film Festival every April.

De Niro claims he enjoys juggling such a variety of roles, though The Good Shepherd looks suspiciously like an attempt to realign himself with more serious film-making.

"It's so much more of a commitment," he admits. "This has been a long, long haul. When 9/11 happened - and I saw that happen right before my eyes - I thought the movie was non-existent. I thought this is what's going on in the world now and I thought [film] was over. Eventually it started back up again and if it has more relevance to things that are happening now, that's what people make of it."

He and Good Shepherd writer Eric Roth are now collaborating with De Niro's old pal Martin Scorsese on a film about their experiences growing up in New York City. Scorsese was clearly a major influence on The Good Shepherd.

"I talked to Marty a few times," smiles De Niro. "I would ask him certain things and showed him the movie a couple of times. I have a lot of experience with him. But I learned other things just by being in movies so much. I know what's going to work and if something isn't quite right. It's almost like I can sense it if the rhythm is off."

You have to agree with him after watching the film. Nothing seems off. It all seems quite right. It definitely works.

The Good Shepherd opens on 23 February.

The day De Niro joined the CIA

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