Robert De Niro and the Money Problems of the Unspeakably Rich

A few days back The Independent ran a widely disseminated article with the attention-grabbing headline, “Robert De Niro ‘will be lucky if he makes $7.5 million this year’, lawyers say.” 

I shared the story on social media with a smug quip about how I too would be lucky if I cracked seven million this year, salary-wise. The response I received from commenters was overwhelmingly snarky and mocking. 

We are currently in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since The Great Depression. So the masses are understandably less than sympathetic to the money problems of a millionaire many times over. 

Yet the headline is as unfair and misleading as it is irresistible. The 7.5 million dollar number did not come out of nowhere. Instead, it was a reference to a pre-nuptial agreement De Niro signed with ex-wife Grace Hightower that stipulated that De Niro would pay for Hightower to have a million dollar yearly credit limit as long as De Niro makes 15 million dollars a year or more. 

That seems like an insane amount of money for a 76 year old actor whose star has fallen dramatically over the years to make annually but according to Hightower’s lawyers it was actually far less than the actual total. They responded to De Niro’s assertion that he was losing money due to COVID-19 and the failure of several of restaurants with an indignant, “I’m not a believer that a man who has an admitted worth of $500m and makes $30m a year, all of a sudden in March he needs to cut down by 50 per cent and ban her from the house.”

I’m not exactly sure where they got the idea that De Niro, a longtime movie star but nobody idea of a massive box-office attraction, was worth a half billion dollars in an absolutely devastated economy and could be counted on to rake in thirty million dollars a year consistently but divorce lawyers are trained to be as aggressive as possible and De Niro is very famous. We’re conditioned to think famous people have all the money in the world. 

De Niro’s lawyers defended their client by saying that in spite of De Niro’s “robust earnings” he’s always “spent more than he has earned” so “this 76-year-old robust man couldn’t retire even if he wanted to because he can’t afford to keep up with his lifestyle expense.” 

Over the course of writing The Travolta/Cage Project and doing the Travolta/Cage podcast I’ve often found myself wondering how Cage and Travolta could make a movie a year in the money-making prime of their careers and five or six interchangeable direct-to-video action movies annually in their fifties. 

The answer, I suspect, has a lot to do with why De Niro can’t stop making movies despite being a 76 year old man whose filmography contains some of the most beloved and important movies of the past half century. When you’re young and beautiful and just starting out all you really have to worry about is feeding your muse and doing work that matters and is important to you. 

But once you reach your fifties or sixties in show-business you have a whole lot more to worry about. You’ve got a whole lot of history and a whole lot of damage behind you. You also have a whole lot more in expenses: ex-wives or husbands and failed production companies and dodgy business ventures and tax bills and interest and debt. 

It’s hard to feel sorry for a millionaire in 2020 regardless of the context but I have some sympathy for De Niro all the same. When you’ve accomplished as much as De Niro has, you really should be able to retire at some point in your late seventies. You should be able to spend time with your children and grandchildren and enjoy life without having to worry about making fifteen million dollars a years. 

We should all be able to retire after a full, productive and accomplished career but capitalism makes that tough for folks regardless of where they happen to fall on the socioeconomic ladder.

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