Show Business: De Niro: The Phantom of the Cinema

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If reports of his reclusiveness are false, it is true that he has remained mostly inaccessible to those who ask for time that he does not want to subtract from his work: "After I give an interview, I spend all my time explaining to people what I meant—or not explaining." He can be remote on a set: "I don't socialize with the actors or the leading lady. It is better to keep a certain sensitivity, that delicate illusion."

Above all he refuses to gossip or discuss personalities, although he volubly praises his past directors, including Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Bernardo Bertolucci. Says he: "The young directors seem to take more chances. They seem to have fewer formulas to work with." De Niro also admires Elia Kazan, with whom he worked on the disappointing Last Tycoon. "I sometimes see him as a parent who doesn't quite approve of his children or what they're doing. He can't relate to it, but he still loves them." After reading Kazan's pamphlet on directing, De Niro got autographed copies to give to his wife and friends.

He is not likely to write such a book himself. Questions about his acting methods often elicit stammers and shrugs. "There is a certain combination of anarchy and discipline in the way I work," he says, with the understanding that anarchy formulated is not anarchy any more. But De Niro thinks incessantly about acting, and can comment shrewdly about it. "Something that helps me," he says, "is the physical feeling of the character, the props, costumes, the way he stands, gestures. I am aware of the physical. It is important. Sometimes it is easier to distinguish a character physically. You make a choice and develop it."

He adds: "It is important not to indicate. People don't indicate. When they tell you about their traumas, they tell it pretty much flat out. People don't try to show you their feelings, they try to hide them. It is important to keep it fresh and simple."

Demonic Guilt. Freshness and simplicity have a way of disappearing between the clauses of million-dollar contracts. De Niro worries about losing the demonic single-mindedness that has propelled his career thus far. "You know what I wonder about?" he asks. "Indecision. I think about it. There are so many alternatives one can take in life. I think about guilt. I wonder why people feel guilty about things they have nothing to do with. If I do something out of weakness, I feel guilty. If it turns out bad, I feel guilty. If it turns out good, I feel guilty."

In such moods, De Niro is likely to hop quickly down the rabbit hole of self. Still visible to those around him, he is nowhere to be seen. On location with The Deer Hunter in Follansbee, W. Va., last week, the actor stepped inside the façade of a motel room (a front, one wall and nothing else) that had been set up for the scene. He sat down in a director's chair, with his back to the crew, and gazed out at the Ohio River. Time crept by; De Niro did not move. More time, and the scene resolved itself into a frieze of De Niro's world: a fake room and a real river and an actor brooding between them.