Paramount Pictures
While Leonardo DiCaprio has obviously been Martin Scorsese’s go-to muse for the last 25 years or so, the fact remains that he’ll never be able to replicate the relationship that the latter has with his longtime pal Robert De Niro.
During a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, for example, Scorsese detailed the differences in acting styles between the pair and how he and De Niro would team-up on DiCaprio in order to get him to tone down the improvisation.
During the production, the director balanced their differing approaches to their roles: De Niro terse, DiCaprio expansive.
“Oh, endless, endless, endless!” Scorsese says with a laugh, recalling DiCaprio’s discussions on set and improvisations in his scenes with De Niro.
“Then Bob didn’t want to talk. Every now and then, Bob and I would look at each other and roll our eyes a little bit. And we’d tell him, ‘You don’t need that dialogue.’” [via The Wall Street Journal]
Scorsese also recently compared the acting styles of DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis, who co-starred together in his 2002 film Gangs of New York, which marked the first time he worked with DiCaprio (the pair have now made six feature films together — Scorsese and De Niro have now collaborated on 10 films).
“Daniel Day is a very specific and a very intense actor. What I love about working with him, is that Daniel has a thing where, if he starts, he stays in that character — people think it’s kind of a mystique — but it really makes sense,” Scorsese told GQ.
“DiCaprio is another way entirely. He comes at a character from every possible angle, and we find that with Leo, most of the work is done before we shoot.”
Killers of the Flower Moon will begin playing in theaters tonight before officially releasing in theaters across the United States, on Friday, October 20.
In addition to DiCaprio and De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon also stars Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, John Lithgow, and more.