When Robin Williams broke Robert De Niro’s nose

We saw Robert De Niro as a chameleon changing color over the course of his long career cinematic. We have seen him involved in fights, shootings, stabbings, we remember films like the The Godfather II or Fire against the fire …

Generally it usually happens that when it comes to movies, that is fiction, the actor – whoever – comes out completely unharmed from the action scenes and goes to eat a barbecue in the corner. But there is an anecdote that arose from an emotional drama that led him to the hospital after suffering an a broken nose in full recovery.

And who broke Robert de Niro’s nose? The blow came from none other than from dead and always lovable Robin Williams.

Based on a true story

Robin Williams and Robert De Niro worked together awakenings (“Awakenings”) from 1990, a film inspired by a true story and based on the memories of Dr. Oliver Sacks.Robin played a neurologist who administered life-changing drugs that woke up patients who had spent decades in a semi-catatonic state.

De Niro was one of those patients. The film earned Oscar nominations. for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and De Niro also earned a nomination for Best Actorbut he didn’t win because the trend of those years had been to assign roles to people with mental problems, and that would have been a bit redundant.

awakenings it could, however, have been one of the best Robin Williams movies and certainly one of his best non-comic performances, according to the specialized media Movie.

a real hit

But let’s get back to the blow. How is it possible that in a dramatic and tearful film, Robin Williams broke Robert De Niro’s nose in the middle of filming?

Robin told it during an interview with the Australian TV host Ray Martin. Apparently the character of De Niro “was supposed to have a seizure” and Robin (who died in 2014) the character had to keep him still. “There my elbow went ‘BAM!’ and it made a noise like a chicken bone breaking …“William said.

“I grew up watching professional wrestling (WWE to be exact) and spent my time listening to teachers, adults and other critics who constantly stressed that professional wrestling was fake (…)”.

“Actors, like professional wrestlers, risk their bodies to entertain us. And unfortunately mistakes occur during filming that sometimes lead to injuries or even worse, ”the actor recalled in that interview.

William inadvertently hit De Niro on the muzzle and didn’t get any worse, especially since Robert was quite tanned from his performance in Wild bull.

In the interview, Williams concluded the “Robert De Niro broken nose” chapter by joking with the words of De Niro’s surgeon, who claimed that “Williams had put De Niro’s nose back in place due to an injury sustained while filming the 1980 film based on the life of boxer Jake LaMotta “.

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