Behind The Scenes Of Cape Fear: Robert De Niro’s Scariest Performance

Robert De Niro’s Max Cady is arguably one of the most terrifying characters in film history. After 14 years inside, he’s muscular, covered in severe Biblical tattoos, and his teeth are ground down to jagged pearls. To get the right physique, De Niro worked out constantly, and Scorsese filmed all the actor’s shirtless scenes towards the end of the production so he’d be in the best shape.

De Niro dedicated himself to getting the right look. He paid $5,000 to have a dentist grind his teeth down to make him appear more menacing; then, after shooting ended, he spent another $20,000 to have his teeth fixed.

Every scene between Robert De Niro’s Cady and Juliette Lewis’s Danielle is tense. Cady menaces her with a flirtatious drawl, and Danielle falls for it. In a memorable scene, Cady shoves his thumb into the girl’s mouth before kissing her.

According to Lewis, the two never rehearsed the scene, and it took her by surprise. “He put his thumb in my mouth all the way, and then he pulled it all the way out,” she said. “I’ll tell you exactly what it felt like, emotionally – like someone walked up, penetrated you and then walked away.”

Though uncomfortable with it, Lewis kept on acting. Rather than pushing his hand away like she initially wanted to, she sucked on his thumb.

Actor Juliette Lewis was only 17 years old at the time of filming. As such, she was still considered a minor and would have been subjected to certain labor laws. She had previously declared herself an adult, however, with her parents’ consent.

At 14, Lewis emancipated herself to avoid youth labor law restrictions:

See, I wanted to work. And I hated that they’d say, “We lose the kid in five minutes!” So you’d have to rush, you know. And I’d want to do my best. And also you have to pay a (legal) guardian who sits and basically does nothing… Things like that I didn’t need.

Because Lewis was legally an adult, she could work 12 hour days with the rest of the cast and crew.

Robert De Niro was always going to star in Cape Fear, but Scorsese initially wanted him to play opposite Harrison Ford. Ford didn’t want to play Sam Bowden, however, as he preferred the role of the Max Cady.

De Niro didn’t want to give up his role, so Nick Nolte was cast as Sam Bowden instead.

The film’s heart-pounding final sequence takes place on a houseboat cruising along a river during a rainstorm, but the scene was completely shot within a 90-foot-long water tank. The large water tank was able to float one of the two full-sized mock houseboats and simulate a river.

Producer Barbara De Fina said the crew was uncertain about building something that size, but it had its benefits. “It was hard making that commitment to build something so big,” De Fina told the Los Angeles Times. “In the overview, I guess the amount of money we spent to build the tank we’ll save by not having to worry about things like weather and tides and alligators.”

To keep dialogue scenes as tense as possible, Martin Scorsese eschewed the standard style of shooting. Rather than filming one actor’s angle then relighting and shooting the second angle, Scorsese elected to use two cameras simultaneously. This technique is most notable in the harrowing scene between Max Cady and Danielle Bowden in the high school theater.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Juliette Lewis and Robert De Niro never rehearsed the tense scene; instead, they filmed it three times with Scorsese taking both angles so he wouldn’t have to cut and interrupt the tension.