Acting legend Robert DeNiro has a reputation for being difficult to work with – now, his child’s nanny says he’s just as difficult to work FOR. Alexis Barry claims that the actor and his wife owe her $40,000 in unpaid wages for 750 hours of overtime, and 10 vacation days that she was never allowed to take.
A nanny who was fired by Robert De Niro has sued the actor for more than $40,000 in overtime pay.
Alexis Barry says in court papers that she was never paid for more than 750 hours of overtime and never took 10 vacation days. She began working for De Niro and his wife, Grace Hightower, in August 2006, and says she was fired 10 months later -after she said she was going to quit. The couple have an 11-year-old son.
Barry says she is owed more than $40,000. She filed a lawsuit Friday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court.
De Niro spokesman Stan Rosenfield says he can’t comment because he hasn’t seen the lawsuit.
I guess celebrities have the same trouble finding child care as the rest of us, even with all their money and privilege. But if this woman’s claim is accurate, 750 hours of overtime in 10 months is a lot, especially if there’s only one kid to care for– just what kind of schedule was this woman working, anyway? Did Bobby ever actually take care of his own kid? It sounds like things got ugly for everyone. This trend of firing the nanny before she can quit seems to be all the rage these days.
Here’s Robert DeNiro at the premiere of the movie “What Just Happened.” Credits: PRPhotos.
I have done child care you do get taken advantage of
one time a mother left her child with me for 3 days !! she said she would be gone for only the eveing. My guess she hooked up with a guy and party with him the whole weekend.
I never got Paid for looking after her kid for 3 days
back to the 750 hours in 10 months how can that be well
that weekend I babysat it was a total of 80 hours.
Yup, I’ve done child care myself and the hours are horrible and the parents are sometimes worse.
I have a friend that worked as a nanny for a celeb, she worked really long hours and many times stayed overnight.
The parents would go away for days on end leaving her with 2 small kids, when they returned they wanted to pay her for 8 hours per day, not when she or the kids were sleeping. She said oh no, you pay me for the time I was here, I could not leave or go home, you pay me for my time or find someone else.
Some of these celebs are so cheap, they pay their drivers and hairdresses more than they pay the nannies who take care of the most precious possessions.
She wants to be paid ? The audacity !
Hell even when I was a teenager babysitting this woman’s horrible kids for the night while she went to night school, she’d always “forget” to pay me until I reminded her. It was so awkward, it was like she’d start a conversation with me when she got home with the specific intent of distracting me so I didn’t ask her for my pay. I was only making 5.00 an hour!! On top of that I washed her dishes, cleaned her house and her brat daughter trashed my bike for refusing to take them to buy soda pop at almost 10pm. She said she’d pay for the damages but of course, she just stopped calling me.
This is bull! Look at those wrinkles – the man is way too old to need a nanny!
DeNiro needs to pay his nanny. Bastard.
DeNiro’s got millions of dollars, receives royalties, invests in several restaurants and owns his own hotel in Manhattan. He has money. Lots of it. Mr. DeNiro, be a gentleman and pay your nanny her overtime wages. Absolutely disgusting.
Funny how once you get a reputation as a BRILLIANT ACTOR (and I am a fan), the media is too intimidated to ask how much you make. (“He’s DeNiro!!! He couldn’t POSSIBLY be a greedy swine!”)
And yet, apparently he is.
Charley Kane, you just made my morning. That was hilarious!
So the idea of the rich & famous is when help gives notice of their impending departure [which is the proper thing to do]
You fire them! First Madonna & now De Niro. I expect crap like this from Madonna but not from Bob. v v sad
It is customary to fire an employee who has given notice because there is no accountability anymore. That gap in time is when theft is most likely to occur.
Actually, M. I., in many states it’s considered wrongful termination and you can be awarded unemployment pay. Giving notice is customary in professional employment-obviously you aren’t experienced with this. I gave notice at one job that I was leaving in one month out of courtesy to give them time to find someone else, as there was no on in the office ready to take the position-instead they fired me. I was able to receive the full amount of unemployment wages (which was significantly less than my income), and I took them-I didn’t need the cash, but I wanted it on principle. I feel for anyone who works for an employer who has so little respect for an employee. Firing someone who could be depending on those wages until their next job starts is petty and wrong. Bob probably had to deal with his kids for 20 minutes before the agency sent another nanny-I hope one puked on him.
shoulda had his mob buddies rub her out – ha.
What kind of fucking idiot waits 2-3 years to take legal action against no pay. Makes me think she’s suss. That or an idiot. If she’s so lazy to wait this long to do it, makes me wonder what her work ethic must have been.
People are assuming this woman isn’t just going after an easy buck. In which case Bobby doesn’t owe her shit.
If she’s genuine, well then of coarse she deserves her money.
@ J.B.: No. you’re right, I have no experience with this! But I do have over a dozen friends who have done this exact thing for the reason I stated. Only one was questioned. She went on to say that once the nanny had given notice, they could no longer in good conscience believe that she would care for their child in the way that was expected…her heart was no longer in it. This is a truly common practice in my part of the world.
That’s fair enough MI; however, since the nanny is filing suit in NY, I’m guessing that the law is open to a similar interpretation as in my case. If you are outside the US, this may very well be a different situation. It probably would result in a frustrating lack of trust in the future, as the sacked nanny will know better than to give notice next time-and then the parent is left with no nanny when a better offer comes. There’s not necessarily a win-win, but one would think that De Niro would have vetted his nanny, or used a bonded company, to the point that if she walked away with the good china, he would be able to gain some type of reparations. I simply can’t support breaking faith with an employee, if that employee has performed their duties correctly and is giving notice as is considered correct in this part of the world. We don’t have access to all the data, these are simply generalities in which we all are speaking.
This is all supposing that the nanny, or caregiver, is a professional, vetted, retained, and provided by a company with some standards. If it’s a more casual relationship, or one with no professional guidelines to limit the behavior of either party, then there is something to your statements. However, if the caregiver was provided by a company with before mentioned standards, she would continue to maintain her same level of care, or even be more attentive, to ensure that her overall position and reputation were not impugned by shoddy behavior in the last 2 wks of a job.
Speaking of that, if I don’t get back to it, it may be my last 2 wks of a job đŸ˜‰ Ha!
Just because its ‘common practice’ MI doesn’t make it ok. And in MY part of the world (NZ) its called “wrongful dismissal or unjustified dismissal” and your ass would be liable for severance pay, hurt and humilation damages and fines for unlawful behaviour…
I wouldn’t take sides on this unless I heard all the details (although it’s probably more likely the nanny got shafted), but working out the request for damages and the report of the hours worked, it sounds like she was supposed to be getting in the range of 40-45$ an hour, if my math is right. How much do celeb nannies get paid these days, just out of curiosity????
Lot’s of people have been left in the lurch when it comes to payment for services rendered to Mr. Robert DeNiro.
He is notorious for being cheap both in the entertainment industry and now in his personal life.
I suppose when you get to his level of popularity and stardom the “little people” just don’t matter anymore.
And his wife is no better at public relations. Her reputation for being abusive is well known.
So put the two of them together and you have one couple of jerks!!!
Good luck with all your money, Mr. DeNiro…but remember..what goes around; comes around!!
I’m sure they went through an agency with insurance/and a libility clause. Does anyone know what agency the nanny came from? depending on what agency,will depend on how much she will be able to sue for..if at all.I have represented many celeb.workers and at the end of the day it is the agency that gets the bulk of the Libilitry.