On the opening night of the Cannes film festival, Robert De Niro takes the stage to accept an honorary Palme d’Or. He embraces Leonardo DiCaprio, turns to the mic and lets fly: celebrating the event as a haven for art, democratic, inclusive and therefore a threat to autocrats and fascists. His speech is fiery and combative, but the adoring response leaves him shaken: he has to blink and regroup. At one point, I think, he might have even welled up. “Yeah, I got sentimental,” he admits the next morning. “How could I not be?”
We’re upstairs at the Cannes Palais des Festivals, with the windows thrown open and sunlight on the walls. The hosts rush to provide him with a hot cup of coffee and then – when he leaves that untouched – swoop back to furnish him with another. His voice is still hoarse from the night before and risks being drowned out by the cheering masses outside. Tom Cruise, it transpires, has just appeared on the terrace. “Different type of actor,” De Niro says ruefully. “Mission: Impossible, that’s a franchise. But I understand that. I’ve done franchises myself.”
