Carmel was excited when Awakenings was taken up by Hollywood and I met Penny Marshall and Robert De Niro. But her instinct played her wrong on my fifty-fifth birthday, when De Niro attended my party on City Island and (in the invisible way he has) managed to come to my little house and ensconce himself quietly upstairs without anyone recognizing him. When I told Carmel that De Niro had arrived, she said, very loudly, “That’s not De Niro. He’s a look-alike, a double, sent by the studio. I know what a real actor is like, and he doesn’t take me in for a minute.” She knew how to project her voice, and everyone heard her comment. I myself became uncertain and went down to the phone box on the corner, where I phone De Niro’s office. Puzzled, they said of course that was the real De Niro. And no one was more amused than De Niro himself, who had heard Carmel’s bellowing.
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