Why Stanley Kubrick didn’t want to work with Robert De Niro: “It’s such a fantastic part”
You’d think that being a Hollywood star would let an actor work with any director they wanted, but sometimes even a legend isn’t the right fit. Robert De Niro has worked with some of the greatest filmmakers—his long-time collaborators, Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, and more—but Stanley Kubrick even turned him down.
The actor, who rose to prominence in the New Hollywood era of the 1970s, found success with roles in The Godfather Part II, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and The Deer Hunter. By the end of the decade, he was one of the industry’s biggest stars, with one Oscar win under his belt and two other nominations from the Academy. His career continued on an upward slope into the 1980s, with the decade starting with yet another Oscar win, this time for Raging Bull, widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made.
He was in high demand, appearing in everything from The King of Comedy and Once Upon a Time in America to Brazil and The Untouchables. However, De Niro was initially considered for a film that could’ve made the 1980s an even more star-studded and unforgettable decade: Full Metal Jacket.
The spectacular film was released in 1987 and remains one of the greatest anti-war movies of all time. Kubrick based the movie on Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers, brutally depicting the plight of war for all involved. We follow the characters through the harsh world of boot camp, where a terrifying drill sergeant incites terror and hatred among the platoon members, and Kubrick’s unflinching eye makes for an incredibly hard and moving watch.
Played by R Lee Ermey, who had previous experience as a real drill instructor in the United States Marine Corps, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is one of the most horrifying characters that Kubrick ever put to screen – and he put a lot of terrifying characters in his films. While it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Ermey portraying the character, who meets his demise when the mentally unstable Private Leonard ‘Gomer Pyle’ Lawrence shoots him, Kubrick and co-writer Michael Herr discussed other actors first. In fact, Ermey hadn’t acted in many films before Full Metal Jacket, but he managed to secure the role against the director’s consideration of several much more established stars.
Writing for Vanity Fair, Herr revealed: “We talked a lot about actors for Full Metal Jacket. He couldn’t wait to find out who would play Sergeant Hartman, the demon drill instructor—’It’s such a fantastic part’. We talked about Robert De Niro, but Stanley thought the audience would feel cheated when he’s killed off in the first hour. Then he was thinking about Ed Harris, but Harris wasn’t interested, because ‘Get this, Michael. He wants to take a year off! Hey, I know! What about Richard Benjamin? He’d be perfect, Michael, ha ha ha ha.’”
It appears that De Niro’s fame was actually a hindrance to him working with one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. This proved to be a good thing, however, giving us one of the most haunting performances of the 20th century in the form of Ermey’s Sergeant Hartman.
