"Silver Linings Playbook" actors Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper joined director David O. Russell on Katie Couric's daytime talk show "Katie" on Monday to discuss their Oscar-nominated film.
Bradley Cooper's "Playbook" character, Pat Solitano, is a bipolar man who has recently been released from a mental institution and is returning home to live with his parents — played by Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver.
Director David O. Russell says he wanted to make the film because the content is close to his heart.
"I've had a son who has a mood disorder, which means someone that can have moods that can pull them down the drain and send the home to a tornado in moments," Russell says in the "Katie" interview.
O. Russell's real-life son Matthew plays the nosy next door neighbor whom De Niro chases out of the yard in the film.
When Couric asked De Niro if he felt a greater responsibility about doing a film in which the director had so much personally invested, De Niro begins to tear up and says, "I don’t like to get emotional, but I know exactly what he [David] goes through."
The director recalled to Couric, "I thought he [De Niro] was having hay fever, then I realized he was having an emotional reaction and I sat there and watched Robert De Niro cry for 10 minutes and I said, 'Wow he's really connecting with this material and this would be beautiful thing if it could work out, because I think his heart would be there' and it is there."
Watch the full interview below:
SEE ALSO: Robert De Niro hung out with Bradley Cooper at yesterday's Oscar luncheon >
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