Robert De Niro explains how he lost ‘Goodbye Girl’ to Richard Dreyfuss

LOS ANGELES — Hollywood acting legend Robert De Niro reflected on his career when he recently appeared with Quentin Tarantino at the 2024 Tribeca Festival’s De Niro Con for a screening of their 1997 movie ‘Jackie Brown’.

After the screening, the veteran actor opened up about being fired from a project in the 1970s, reports People magazine.

Talking about his time on the set of the 1977 romantic comedy ‘The Goodbye Girl’, he said: “I shot for about two weeks. It was the worst.”

As per People, he was replaced by Richard Dreyfuss, and the script was rewritten. After the title change, the rom-com became the motion picture that fans know it as today. The story of how De Niro left the project has been reported in the past, including in Shawn Levy’s 2014 biography ‘De Niro: A Life’.

The actor said that there was only “maybe three times in my life I’ve ever had that kind of experience with [a] director,” referring to working with director Mike Nichols. He clarified that even in those past instances, they were plays and that he never had such an experience on the set of a film.

“I was sitting in my camper and you feel this dread of just, just not working,” De Niro recalled. He said he happened to hear some of the crew walk by outside of his trailer and say, “He’s just not funny.”

“That’s electric. I couldn’t have felt worse at that moment,” De Niro said. The ‘Goodfellas’ talent said that about three days later, he received a call from Nichols with the director expressing that he was headed in a different direction for the production.