Robert De Niro has caused a stir after storming out of an interview.
He stormed out of an interview with a Radio Times journalist while doing a press junket for his film The Intern, after saying she was asking him questions with a “negative inference”.
He objected to questions from interviewer Emma Brockes, after asking how he avoids falling into “autopilot” mode on set, and whether Tribeca, home to the New York film festival, had been overrun by bankers.
The actor reportedly asked Emma to pause the recorder and paced about “madly” before refusing to continue because of the “negative inference” of her questions. He remarked:
“All the way through. Negative inference....The whole way through and I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it, darling.” He then looked to be escorted from the room.
Brockes told The Guardian she “felt sympathy” for De Niro, who had been at the junket all day, but insisted she wasn't hostile.
"When someone is being uncooperative in that kind of interview, when they are obviously grumpy and knackered, you ask them a number of straightforward questions and you leave,” she said. “You try to be respectful and polite, which I was. It wasn’t a hostile interview. Poor guy - who would want to be contractually obliged to do this stuff? But you make the best of it so you can go home.”
Emma admits she “lost her cool”, and told De Niro she thought he was "condescending.”
Of course, De Niro isn't the first celebrity to storm out mid-questioning - see more awkward celebrity interviews here.