Have you ever wondered why such an amazing actor like Robert De Niro would allow his career, which has includes cinematic classics like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and Raging Bull, could descend in recent years to the point where he's a part of fodder like Dirty Grandpa and The Intern? Well, let the celebrity rumor mill tell it, a recent, heated argument with his wife Grace Hightower explains all.
According to Page Six, Hightower owns a coffee company, Coffees of Rwanda, of which De Niro is an investor. Word is that the company, which is five years old, is hemorrhaging money, and sounds kind of directionless; whatever the situation is, De Niro is apparently pissed.
As the story goes, Hightower and De Niro got into it in public while at a bar in Manhattan, and De Niro is said to have dropped a major truth bomb mid-argument: "I wouldn’t have to keep making s - - tty movies if you didn’t spend all my money!"
Facts? It'd make sense; The Hollywood Reporter says De Niro is pulling in $750,000 per episode for an upcoming 20-episode series he's doing with Amazon, and it was reported in 2015 that he got $13 million to star in a commercial alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in a Martin Scorsese-directed ad for a casino in the Philippines. You can only imagine how much he asked for Dirty Grandpa, which was slaughtered by the critics and seen as a true career low for the acclaimed actor.
De Niro's rumored to have a $200 million net worth, thanks to his success in the world of building restaurants. And it looks like Coffees of Rwanda is found not just in De Niro's cavalcade of restaurants, but in places like the Breslin, Salvation Burger, and the Ace Hotel. When Page Six hit up a De Niro rep for response, they put it bluntly: "Your story is based on something that never happened from a source who has an ax to grind."
If that's the case, we still don't have a firm reason as to why De Niro is fine doing movies like Dirty Grandpa.
