Ivan Passer, directing his first American film Born to Win (1971), later recounted a production running on raw energy and occasional friction — in particular with a young Robert De Niro. According to Passer, De Niro, a devoted Stella Adler student even at this early stage of his career, repeatedly pushed choices for his small secondary role so forcefully that he drew attention away from the film's leads (George Segal and Karen Black). Passer has said De Niro was "nearly fired many times throughout shooting," an anecdote that captures the uneasy mix of method-actor intensity and inexperienced on-set diplomacy that marked many New Hollywood sets. The flashpoint is less a single documented blowup than a pattern: De Niro using Adler-derived techniques to carve out a presence, the director's exasperation at what he saw as diverting energy, and the production-level threat of dismissal that hung over the young actor. The incident is often cited in histories of De Niro's early career as a telling moment — it didn’t derail him, of course, but it added to the lore of his uncompromising approach and to Passer's memory of a fraught, improvisational shoot in Manhattan's gritty early-1970s Times Square.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Robert De Niro Almost Cut Loose on Ivan Passer's 1971 Born to Win Over Method Antics
Robert De Niro / Born to Win / 1970s
Ivan Passer, directing his first American film Born to Win (1971), later recounted a production running on raw energy and occasional friction — in particular with a young Robert De Niro. According to Passer, De Niro, a devoted Stella Adler student even at this early stage of his career, repeatedly pushed choices for his small secondary role so forcefully that he drew attention away from the film's leads (George Segal and Karen Black). Passer has said De Niro was "nearly fired many times throughout shooting," an anecdote that captures the uneasy mix of method-actor intensity and inexperienced on-set diplomacy that marked many New Hollywood sets. The flashpoint is less a single documented blowup than a pattern: De Niro using Adler-derived techniques to carve out a presence, the director's exasperation at what he saw as diverting energy, and the production-level threat of dismissal that hung over the young actor. The incident is often cited in histories of De Niro's early career as a telling moment — it didn’t derail him, of course, but it added to the lore of his uncompromising approach and to Passer's memory of a fraught, improvisational shoot in Manhattan's gritty early-1970s Times Square.
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