MOVIES EXTRA: Fine feelings

When an actor gets the chance to work with the godfather of Hollywood, he doesn’t think twice.

So when Sam Rockwell pretends he didn’t know who Robert De Niro was when he took the call about his latest film, he’s not fooling anyone.

“I didn’t know who he was,” jokes the 41-year-old Moon star. “I was like ‘Robert who? It’s not ringing any bells!”’

In fact, De Niro is one of the reasons he became an actor and certainly why he agreed to play his son in upcoming drama, Everybody’s Fine.

“He is obviously a big hero of mine, I’ve seen everything of his, I grew up on his films. And he was a teacher – unconsciously and consciously, I was learning about acting watching him.”

Everybody’s Fine, a remake of an Italian film, sees Oscar winner De Niro playing Frank Goode, a widower who has spent his life working in a wire factory, earning money to support his family.

When he retires, he realises he hasn’t spent enough time with his children and sets off on a road trip across the US to surprise each of them.

He expects to find them living the successful lives his wife had always told him about, but the reality is very different.

As a father of four sons and one adopted daughter, 66-year-old De Niro knew only too well how complicated family relationships can be and it was this that appealed about the film.

“I can identify with this stuff, to say the least. I can understand what Frank is going through with his kids and that’s what was so interesting to me,” he says, in his unmistakeable drawl.

“I have five kids and two grandchildren, so I could easily draw on my own experience.”

Such is De Niro’s pulling power as an actor, that Drew Barrymore and Kate Beckinsale, as well as Sam Rockwell, lined up to play his on-screen children, Rosie, Robert and Amy – and they worked hard to recreate a family.

“I hate those fake Hollywood families where people do one read-through and suddenly they’re a family,” says Barrymore, 34, whose character is “a dancer” in Las Vegas. “This was different because we spent a lot of time together so the tactile feeling of affection would come across between us.”

Beckinsale adds: “I think we all felt very connected. Everyone was full of emotions about the story.

“We might not have had the same experiences as our characters, but the themes of secrets in families, trying to protect your parents and the relationships between siblings was something each of us could relate to.”

The English actress plays Amy, who is supposedly “high up in advertising” in Chicago. But her father turns up unannounced in the middle of a personal crisis.

“Amy just starts lying and it begins to spiral until she can’t stop.”

For Beckinsale, 36, playing De Niro’s daughter was a doddle because she already saw him as a father figure.

“We all felt that he had this quality that reminded us of our own fathers,” she says. “It’s not the way he looks or what he does, but he has this mix of strength and vulnerability.”

Rockwell adds: “It wasn’t as difficult as I thought pretending De Niro was my dad. Because he is so good, he brings it out of you.”Everybody’s Fine was written and directed by Nanny McPhee’s Kirk Jones and based on the Italian film Stanno Tutti Bene by Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore.

“I was very aware of how universal family is as a theme, possibly second only to the theme of love, which half the films we watch are about,” he said.