Robert De Niro forced to take ‘every project that comes along’ to fund divorce, lawyer claims

Lawyer claims The Irishman star works ‘six-day weeks, 12-hour days’ to fund his ex-wife’s lifestyle

Robert De Niro’s divorce has led to him taking every job offered to him, his lawyer had claimed.

In recent years, the veteran actor has starred in a number of critically panned projects, including the 2020 family film The War with Grandpa.

Appearing in court on Friday (16 April), De Niro’s lawyer Caroline Strauss claimed that the actor was having to work at an “unsustainable pace” to support his estranged wife Grace Hightower following their split in 2018.

“Mr De Niro is 77 years old,” Krauss said during a virtual hearing for the ongoing divorce case. “While he loves his craft, he should not be forced to work at this prodigious pace because he has to.

“When does that stop? When does he get the opportunity to not take every project that comes along and not work six-day weeks, 12-hour days so he can keep pace with Ms Hightower’s thirst for Stella McCartney? He could get sick tomorrow, and the party’s over.”

As part of the prenuptial agreement brought in before the couple married in 1997, DeNiro will have to pay the socialite $1m (£716,000) a year, so long as he makes more than $15m (£10.7m).

However, the pair have been arguing for three years about how much he should pay Hightower until the terms of the prenup come into effect.

De Niro and Hightower in 2018 (Getty Images for Tribeca Film Fe)

While De Niro is estimated to be worth $500m (£358m), his lawyers have said that he has struggled financially in recent years.

In July 2020, they claimed that he had been forced to borrow from business partners to pay investors $500,000 (£358,000) because “he doesn’t have the cash”.