De Niro’s trainer of over 40 years reveals actor’s rigorous workout routine during NYC legal battle with ex-assistant

Robert De Niro’s personal trainer of 40 years described him as a generous boss who treated him well — while detailing the close relationship they built through daily, rigorous work-out routines during testimony in the actor’s ongoing legal battle with his ex-assistant.

Dan Harvey, 63, told a Manhattan federal court jury Wednesday that De Niro, 80, never cursed him out or used profanity in the decades they’d been working together, but conceded that the “Mean Streets” actor sometimes yelled at him when the two men were younger.

“When I was younger it happened a lot. Not so much anymore. I sort of know the ropes, so to speak,” Harvey testified.

Their workout sessions — which vary based on what role De Niro is prepping for — typically last between two to seven hours on an almost daily cycle, and Harvey estimated that in the last 365 days, he’d spent 310 of them with the Oscar-winner.

Harvey’s account countered the accusations from Graham Chase Robinson, 41, who described De Niro as a hellish boss who frequently berated her with expletive-laden tirades in her 2019 lawsuit against the actor.

She also accused De Niro of relegating her to stereotypically female tasks like doing housework and running errands, despite holding the self-created title of Vice President of Production and Finance.

When Robinson’s attorney asked whether De Niro ever made Harvey run errands like picking up coffee, he said at some point he probably had.

“I mean, I’ve been working for him for 40 years. I’m sure I got coffee for him at some point,” he testified. “It’s not my job. There’s assistants and PAs and drivers who do that stuff.”

Harvey first started working with De Niro in 1984 after the Manhattan-born actor had finished shooting the boxing movie “Raging Bull.”

“He was looking for a trainer to help him lose the 35 pounds that he had from the movie,” Harvey testified, explaining that before long he was helping De Niro practice his lines during workouts.

“We would be working on dialogue and he would work with me, two hours training, then maybe walk the treadmill slow, working his dialogue, running his dialogue with me,” he said.

“He literally walks in and starts talking to me. He starts the first scene of the day and he’s queuing me… As soon as he walks into the door… He wants to roll and run the next scene the next day.”

Over the years, Harvey said he travelled the world with De Niro, training him for months at a time on movie sets in countries including Argentina, Brazil, Russia, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, England, France, Italy and Hungary.

Training methods changed to meet the needs of the role De Niro was playing, Harvey said, recalling how the ending of 1990’s “Goodfellas” required the actor to look older than he did throughout the rest of the movie.

“We went and trained 21 days straight in Montauk to make him look a little bit older and gaunt,” Harvey said.

Other movies, like “Cape Fear” the following year, required De Niro to look “very lean, defined and cut up.”

Harvey said De Niro paid him a $290,000 salary before 2019, which was bumped to $375,000 in May of that year.

During the 2008 financial crisis, he tried to cut it by 50% but Harvey asked him not to.

“I explained to Mr. De Niro that getting a 50% pay cut at this point was just not going to work with me. I told him I have a mortgage payment, I have car payments and it just didn’t make sense for me,” Harvey testified.

“He said he would totally understand and take care of it.”

Robinson — who started working for De Niro in 2008 — asked for a pay raise 10 years later to match what Harvey was making.

She previously testified that De Niro initially brushed her requests off.

“Chase you don’t have kids. Dan has a family to support,” she said he told her.

De Niro ultimately agreed to pay Robinson a $300,000 salary, before she stopped working for him in 2019.

Closing arguments in the case are expected Wednesday afternoon.