I Blame Dennis Hopper (16 page)

And he kind of stammered and said, “Where are you going?”

And I said, “I'm going back upstairs to Peggy's.”

And then, just a little too quickly, he said, “I'm going back upstairs, too.”

It was one of those awkward moments where I thought: I don't think he was going back upstairs. I think he wants to ride in the elevator with me. We got to the ninth floor, and again there was this odd, “I'm going this way; which way are you going?” “Oh, so am I” kind of awkwardness. Eventually he ended up walking me all the way to Peggy's office. It was after hours, and the office was empty. He kind of peeked in, and said, “So … this is where you work.” I said, “Yes,” pointing out my desk. And Marty said, “Oh, is that your little desk?” And again I thought: Doesn't Martin Scorsese have more important things to do? I watched him walk down the hall. Before he turned the corner, he turned around once more and waved. I waved back. I got back to my little desk and just smiled to myself.

On one of my last looping days, Marty told me he was casting the part of Rosanna Arquette's friend in his upcoming segment of the anthology film
New York Stories
. I loved Rosanna Arquette; she'd been in
After Hours,
which was one of my favorite of Marty's films at that time. My honest-to-God reaction when he mentioned
New York Stories
was that I thought he was just talking to me about his work, the way we had been talking every day about movies and work. I was young and earnest and really just wanted to do a good job. I had too much respect to say, “Hey, Marty? Any parts for me in your next film?” I was trained by Peggy Siegal that working with directors like Norman Jewison, Barry Levinson, and Brian De Palma meant you would never dream of pushing an agenda by telling them you were an actress. I later auditioned for Norman Jewison, and he was shocked to find out that I even
was
an actress.

So the first couple of times that Marty mentioned casting this role, I brushed it aside. It was Thelma Schoonmaker who said when Marty left the room, “Illeana, I think he wants to see if you are available to audition.”

Oh, my God. Now I get it. The next time the subject came up, I was ready.

Marty said, “Yeah. You have a kind of Rosanna Arquette quality. I've seen a couple girls for the part, but they haven't been right.”

This time I made sure I was clear: “Yes. I would love to audition for
New York Stories.
” I made the appointment myself through his assistant. I didn't have an agent. It's kind of astonishing to think how far screaming for Marty has taken me.

The appointed day came, and I literally walked from Peggy's office down the hall to audition for Marty and his casting director Ellen Lewis. Ellen went on to cast some of the greatest movies of all time, including
Goodfellas
,
Forrest Gump
, and
The Birdcage
, as well as
Cape Fear
. When I finished reading my sides, I asked, “Do I have the part?”

They said, “We can't tell you that! It's not how it works.”

I said, “But if I have the part then I can go tell Peggy that I have to quit because I'm going to be in
New York Stories.
She will be really impressed.”

They laughed, conferring for a minute before they said, “OK. OK. You have the part.”

It was all a little surreal, since part of me was disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to work with Peggy anymore. I had learned so much from her. In one year I had worked on
The Untouchables; Moonstruck; Good Morning, Vietnam; The Princess Bride
;
Fatal Attraction;
and many more. Peggy took it in stride. She immediately got an item placed about it in the
New York Post'
s buzzy “Page Six.” Actress working for famed publicist lands part in Scorsese movie. Again, a story that sounds like a publicist made it up, only it was true. On my last day of work at Peggy Siegal's I sat at my desk finishing last-minute assignments. I worked on the press kit for
Bright Lights, Big City
. I talked to Charles Grodin about some upcoming press for
Midnight Run
. I said goodbye to the girls in the office—all of whom went on to great things. I smiled as I thought of that first day when I crossed the lobby of the Brill Building and imagined that an elevator ride might lead to working with a director, and now it had. Little did I know it would also lead to a ten-year relationship. Like I said, dream job!

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

What's It Like to Work with Robert De Niro?

The scene that launched “You're the girl from
Cape Fear.”

Everywhere I go, every movie I do, every relationship I have ever been in, every red light I've ever been stopped at, I am invariably asked: “What's it like to work with Robert De Niro?”

I'll be at an airport with guards going through my bags, making sure I'm not a threat, and suddenly one of the TSA folks will look at me very earnestly and say, Can I ask you something? And I think it's going to be about my illegally stashed weapon, or the pot brownie someone planted on me, and instead he or she will say, “Hey! What's it like to get your face bitten off by Robert De Niro?” I'm sorry, is that a security question? I'm pretty sure it's not.

A week before
Cape Fear
came out, I went on David Letterman's show. In
Cape Fear
, I played Lori, the jilted colleague of Nick Nolte who is attacked by Max Cady (Robert De Niro) after he picks her up in a bar. In the pre-interview for Letterman, I went over all my questions with the producer, but when I sat down, Letterman surprised me out of the gate by going off script and asking, “So what's it like? Having Robert De Niro beat the crap out of you?”

And people always get an interesting look on their face when they ask me. Like I'm going to offer up some amazing insight. Something profound: “He covers himself with soot ashes, then incants the words of Stanislavski,
An Actor Prepares
.” Something mystical: “He only works at sunrise, with his body facing east.” Something ridiculous: “Well in between takes of getting beaten up we did Three Stooges routines.” I've always thought that if I
did
say any of those things except for the last one, which is actually true, people would smile knowingly at me and say, “Yes. That's what I thought.”

People's curiosity about this matter is a testament to one of our greatest living actors, and since it's my legacy forever to be the girl who got her face bitten off by him in
Cape Fear
, I'm going to try to answer the question. So what
is
it like to work with Robert De Niro?

To give this some context, I'm going to go back to acting school—that first acting school I went to, where the headmistress thought I had no future. I heard that she was later run over by a bus. I had nothing to do with it, of course. But maybe just as she couldn't see my huge talent right in front of her, she couldn't see that enormous bus coming at her, either. My friend and fellow acting student was Elias Koteas. Elias is a wonderful actor who has created some edgy performances in films such as
Crash
,
The Thin Red Line
, and
Zodiac
. He is very serious, and he had a lot of ambitions, but his
main
ambition back then was to be in a movie with Robert De Niro, hopefully one directed by Martin Scorsese. He was obsessed with all things Robert De Niro. I mean, he would make me eat at the Belmore Cafeteria, because “That's where Travis Bickle ate in
Taxi Driver
.” When I told Elias that I had never actually seen
Taxi Driver,
he was outraged and dragged me to a double feature of
Mean Streets
and
Taxi Driver
so that I could experience the genius of his favorite actor, Robert De Niro. I remember coming out into the light after seeing both films back to back and thinking, Jesus, I want my mommy! Take me to see
Lassie Come Home
or a Danny Kaye musical. Life can't be that dark. Elias just laughed. He was wearing an army jacket and contemplating getting a Mohawk at the time. (I'm kidding.)

Part of the reason Elias thought it was his destiny to work with Robert De Niro was that Elias bore a striking resemblance to him. He had all his mannerisms down, too, which made the comparison more obvious. He was not above stalking him, either. Elias started lurking around the set of
The King of Comedy
, which was filming near our school, trying to get spotted by De Niro so he could hopefully get a part in the movie purely based on their resemblance. Now, unbeknown then to Elias,
The King of Comedy
is a movie
about
a stalker and Elias
was
spotted by De Niro, and he actually thought he might
be
a stalker, and someone from production told him to get the hell away from the set. This, of course, thrilled Elias. It was a sign that it was only a matter of time before he fulfilled his destiny and worked with De Niro for real.

I just wanted to be in show business. I thought
my
destiny was to do comedy. Be on a sitcom. At the time, I couldn't dream a dream big enough that included working with Robert De Niro or Martin Scorsese. I was a comedian. How would I ever in a million years end up working with Robert De Niro or Martin Scorsese? After I was in
The Last Temptation of Christ, New York Stories, Goodfellas
,
Guilty by Suspicion, Cape Fear
—five movies in a row, all with Martin Scorsese or Robert De Niro—I ran into Elias, and he good-naturedly accosted me. “You!” he said. “How did
you
end up with my life?”

Elias did eventually work with Marty on
Shutter Island
, and I was thrilled for him.

It was early in 1989 that I first met Robert De Niro. It was right after the premiere of
New York Stories
. I was in a dark hall on my way to Martin Scorsese's apartment to discuss being in a movie called
Wiseguys,
later changed to be called
Goodfellas
. At the time, Marty was living in a very tall, very modern building on West 57th Street named Metropolitan Tower, nicknamed the Razor Blade Building. The elevator that took you to his penthouse apartment on the seventy-fifth floor was so fast it was like a rocket launch. After you lurched to a stop and got off, the effect was always the same: complete disorientation, nausea, and confusion about which dimension you were in. Everything was pitch-black, as if you were in an air raid, so your eyes had to adjust like a raccoon's as you made your way down the hall. There was also this loud screeching sound—day and night—that Marty assured me was the wind whistling through the glass and steel, but it made you feel as if the building were going to crash to the ground.

So, there I am, making my way down the dark hall, and the wind is blowing like a haunted mansion at Knott's Scary Farm—Marty's Spooky Hallway Ride—and who did I see coming the other way but Robert De Niro. There was no official word that Robert De Niro
was in
the movie, or even considering being in the movie, so I got a secret little thrill that maybe that's why he was leaving Marty's. I smiled politely at him as I passed by and respectfully and quietly said, “Hello.” He politely nodded back, said, “Hello,” and we both kept walking. I did notice that he was wearing large horn-rimmed glasses that I thought made him look very sophisticated. Like Clark Kent. It was a good look.

Marty opened the door for me, and I said, “I just said hello to Robert De Niro. Does that mean he's going to be in the movie?”

And Marty looked a little concerned and said, “You recognized him?”

I laughed, and said, “Of course. He's Robert De Niro!”

And he said, “But he was wearing a disguise.”

And I said, “Marty, he was wearing glasses.”

And Marty said, “I know, he thinks
that's
a disguise.”

And I said, “Well, you might want to tell him it's not working, because he looks like Robert De Niro with glasses on.”

I'm not sure if Marty did tell him, but I never saw him wear those Clark Kent glasses again.

The casting of
Goodfellas
was top-secret stuff. I was privy to hearing about and sometimes even seeing every actor or actress that was even in consideration, but I was sworn to secrecy. Listen, I knew that
I
was in consideration, and Marty wouldn't confirm or deny if I was going to be in the movie, and we were in a relationship. That's how top-secret it was! There was a building excitement that Marty would be reunited with both Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, but names like Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, and John Malkovich were also being mentioned. I let the De Niro casting issue drop, but it did not seem accidental that The Godfather had paid Marty a visit.