Audition Story with Robert De Niro

I'm a career boy. I'm a career boy.

I remember the first time I saw Robert De Niro up on screen.

I was 13 years old, and despite what I had learned at career

day-

I discovered that acting was, in fact, a profession.

My father and I went to see Midnight Run,

and I remember my dad at the beginning of the film pointing to the screen and

saying, "See that guy there?

Now, that guy is cool.

His name is Robert De Niro. You wanna watch a great actor?

You remember his face."

Now, three years later, I was in the position where I needed him to

remember my

face.

I was one of the last remaining contenders for the lead in what would become

my first feature film, This Boy's Life.

Now, before this critical audition, I watched as many of his films as I could,

and I asked myself over and over and over again, "What is the one

quality that he would see in me that he would respect?"

And then it came to me:

menace.

I knew that I needed to walk into that audition and be a menacing

force to be reckoned with.

We were midpoint in the scene where De Niro's character is actually ramming a

mustard jar into my eye and asking me repeatedly, "Is it empty?

Is it empty?"

I knew this was my moment. I got up from the couch, walked

across the room, looked him dead in the eye,

pointed in his face,

and shouted at the top of my lungs, "No!"

Silence.

I knew I had shaken this room up.

This De Niro guy was stunned.

And then it dawned on me, he wasn't stone-faced because of my

awe-inspiring

performance, he was trying to contain his laughter.

And the more he tried, the harder it became.

And eventually, everyone in the room, but of course me, was in

complete hysterics.

And then he turned to me and said,

"That was good. That was,

that was good. Uh,

why don't you, why don't, why don't you, on that last line, why don't you just try

to just, just take it down a notch?"

"One notch, just..." So I did.

I took it down a notch,

and I learned the valuable lesson that some things are good only

to a certain degree.

So I'm here tonight to pay my respect to you, Bob,

and I wanna thank you for taking a chance on me,

for giving me the opportunity to work alongside you and

observe the underlying mechanisms that make you the

consummate actor of our time.