Robert De Niro took to the stand in New York City on the first day of a civil trial lawsuit against him, which alleges he was an “abusive boss”.
The actor is being sued by his former personal assistant, Graham Chase Robinson, who worked for the actor between 2008 and 2019.
Ms. Robinson was paid $300,000 (€281,000) annually before she quit as his vice president of production and finance.
According to the MailOnline, his former personal assistant is suing the actor for $12 million (€11.2 million) in damages for severe emotional distress and reputational harm.
Ms. Robinson told the court that he refused to give her a reference to find another job when she quit in 2019 after repeated clashes with his girlfriend.
The two-time Oscar winning actor testified through most of the afternoon on Monday, and agreed that he had listed Ms. Robinson as his emergency contact at one point and had relied on her to help with greeting cards for his children.
The actor was reportedly “grouchy” throughout his time in court and scoffed when asked if he believed Ms.Robinson to be a conscientious employee.
“Not after everything I’m going through now,” he said.
The report claims that the 80-year-old raised his voice twice during his testimony in court.
The first time was when he was defending the interactions his girlfriend had with Ms. Robinson and said: “We make decisions together.”
The second time occurred when Ms. Robinson’s lawyer tried to suggest that the actor bothered his client early in the morning to take him to the hospital in 2017.
“That was one time when I cracked my back falling down the stairs!”, the actor reportedly angrily snapped.
The Taxi Driver actor insisted that he treated his former assistant well, even after he bought a five-bedroom Manhattan townhouse and let Ms. Robinson oversee some of the preparations so he could move there with his girlfriend, 45-year-old Tiffany Chen.
“It is not like I’m asking for her to go out there and scrape floors and mop the floor,” the actor told the court. “So this is all nonsense!”
Correspondence between the actor and Tiffany that was shown to jurors demonstrated that his girlfriend became increasingly suspicious of his assistant’s motives.
The actor’s girlfriend said she thought Ms. Robinson acted like she was Robert’s wife and believed that she had “imaginary intimacy” with the star.
In Ms. Robinson’s lawsuit, she accuses the actor of forcing her to assume the role of his “office wife.”
The lawsuit also alleges that “De Niro would direct Ms. Robinson to scratch his back, button his shirts and prod him awake when he was in bed.”
The civil trial is expected to last two weeks where Ms. Robinson’s legal team will reportedly introduce more than a dozen voicemails and a number of text exchanges between the actor and his former assistant, as well as between Robert and Tiffany.
