De Niro as Madoff in HBO film: "What he did is beyond my comprehension"

PASADENA, Calif. — HBO is going off to see the Wizard.

In this case, it's The Wizard of Lies, a May movie starring Robert De Niro as convicted financier Bernie Madoff, who ran one of the world's most famous and profitable Ponzi schemes. Michelle Pfeiffer co-stars as his wife, Ruth. Barry Levinson directed the project.

One of the big questions raised by the film, which chronicles Madoff's success in scamming people (including many close friends) out of billions of dollars, is whether Madoff is a sociopath. De Niro isn't sure — and didn't play him as if he is.

"The only thing that I feel is that his kids didn't know and his wife didn't know," De Niro told television critics Saturday. "What he did is beyond my comprehension, so there's a disconnect somehow in him. And I still would like to understand. I did the best I could, but I don't understand...Some people you can go so far and do your interpretation, but the only thing I do feel strongly about is he didn't tell his kids and he didn't tell his wife."

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For Diana Henriques, who wrote the book on which Wizard is primarily based, the answer to the sociopath question is clear.  "Yes," she says. "I don't think you can conduct your life with such a complete lack of empathy of the devastation you're causing without meeting that fuzzy label. But I don't know that that tells us a lot."

The problem, Henriques says, is that many very successful people can meet the "sociopath" definition — but few of them did, or could do, what Madoff did. "What you'll see in Bob's performance," she says, "is how plausible con men like this are, how easily they can seize your trust and admiration and make you believe them...What it boils down to his how he treated people, and how incredibly magnetic he was."

Henriques knew Madoff well; as a New York Times journalist she interviewed Madoff many times during her career, including conducting the first interview with Madoff published after his arrest. And she was stunned, she says, by how well DeNiro captured him, how much he knew about him, and how fully he embodied him — as she learned when she did an improvised "interview" with De Niro as Madoff.

"I made the vow then and there never to take investment advice from Bob De Niro."