Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep
When it comes to cinema royalty, the reigning king and queen are unquestionably Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep. It’s not at all a surprise that the pair—who have co-starred in The Deer Hunter, Falling in Love, and Marvin’s Room—have a healthy amount of respect for each other. But it’s always nice to hear one legend honor another, isn’t it?
Streep was present for the University of Texas at Austin’s Celebration of Film, an event that spotlighted De Niro and his personal film archive, which has been hosted at the university’s Harry Ransom Center since 2005. In a speech about her long friendship with the star, Streep recalled first seeing her future screen partner in 1973’s Bang The Drum Slowly, which starred her college friend Michael Moriarty. “Michael was great but we all agreed that the kid they found in the South, non-actor, clearly non-actor, incredible performance. We thought they must have scoured Appalachia to find this guy,” she said.
Read more
Not long after that, though, she went to see Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets. “And there’s the guy, there’s the same kid. And only he’s not slow. He’s not Southern. He’s a New York punk. He’s absolutely mean, this fast-talking street smart guy and we were blown away,” Streep shared. “We scoured the credits and saw his name. I said, ‘Oh my God.’ He’s Italian. He’s Robert De Niro. He’s an actor. And it really blew me away.”
Streep said she’s often asked “What actress’ career would you like to emulate”—and she does have plenty of examples–“But, really, the second time I saw Robert De Niro, I said to myself, that’s the kind of actor I wanna be,” she said. “That’s what I wanna do. And I wanna do it with the commitment and the passion and the skill and the beauty with which he applies to it. And he’s been my beacon for 50 years.”
“It’s like a kind of seismic power of what he could do if he wanted to. … He’s a man whose presence in my life for 40 years has been a consoling constant. But I don’t see him very often. We don’t chat. But I know he is, without question, always there for me and he always will be,” Streep gushed, adding that her pal is a “true blue patriot” (why not?). “He’s a man who lives by his loyalty to his ideals, to his country and to the people that he loves.”
