Movies - TV
Working With Robin Williams Earned Robert De Niro A Broken Nose
By J. GABRIEL WARE
Based on a memoir by Dr. Oliver Sacks, “Awakenings” stars Robin Williams as a neurologist and Robert De Niro as one of his patients. The movie is a devastatingly emotional drama without any action scenes, yet Williams still ended up accidentally breaking De Niro’s nose.
In an interview, Willams recalled that the injury took place during a scene that involved De Niro’s character having a seizure and William’s character needing to restrain him. Williams explained, "And my elbow went 'BAM!' and it made a noise like a chicken bone breaking.”
Williams finished the account by saying that De Niro’s surgeon said that the accident actually knocked De Niro’s nose back into place from a decades-long injury he had suffered on the set of “Raging Bull.” De Niro confirmed this fact in a 2018 biography about the late actor, saying, “he knocked [my nose] back in the other direction — straightened it out. It looks better than it did before."