Robert De Niro says it's all so ludicrous, and gives you that famous eye-crinkling grin. It's impossible not to grin back. He's talking, in typically vague terms, about "a new cycle in my life", nothing more, nothing less. His conversation has always needed decoding. He seems to be telling me about his relationship with the media, his relationship with his work, his relationships full stop. For De Niro, he's being remarkably forthcoming. Most surprisingly, he seems to be finally admitting that acting is no longer his priority.
It's become a standard complaint that his parts these days are smaller and so much more frequent that the bad are beginning to outnumber the good. A few years ago, Guardian journalist Stuart Jeffries asked him whether his work for his production company TriBeCa had diluted his acting work, and received the following ear-bashing. "Don't be a f***ing wise guy, man. Don't tell me negative stuff. I'm not interested in that. You wanna talk about the movies then, yeah, ask questions that are decent and not trying to get me annoyed and get a certain kind of answer out of me." There is a very different De Niro in front of me now. Mellow, open and, yes, a little vulnerable. Actually, I've seen quite a lot of him in recent years - four interviews and six press conferences is my own score - and he seems to be mellowing by the meeting. Once a man of mystery, he has become Mr Accessibility on the festival circuit.
In a world in which celebrities are exhibited only at press "junkets", the journalist's best hope is that over a period of time, layer by layer, you can build up a more accurate picture of a star. Cannes once, for Cop Land. Venice - where we are now, to talk about Ronin - repeatedly. ("I'm Italian in my soul." Big grin.) He was in Berlin earlier this year, and, for once, there really was something to say. At the press conference in Berlin, an Australian journalist asked De Niro about his recent experience while shooting Ronin in Paris, when he was questioned for nine hours about possible connections to an international call-girl ring. "I have never paid for a woman in my life. And even if I had, it wouldn't be a crime," he said. But far from being offended, he seemed eager to talk about this episode: "That was an awful experience and a totally unnecessary one. A lot of people have told me they were embarrassed. It just shouldn't have happened. I sent the judge a letter saying I was going to be there and they made a big drama about it, came bursting into my room, seven or eight cops, which was totally unacceptable.
"I love Paris and I love the French, but the judicial system there with the judges having so much power is deplorable. You're guilty until you're proven innocent. This particular judge seemed to be carrying out some sort of witch-hunt. Maybe he thought he was in a movie . . ." Typically, De Niro was at Berlin to promote three new films - a modern adaptation of Great Expectations, in which he plays the convict Magwitch, Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, and Wag The Dog, in which he and Dustin Hoffman advise a US president caught up in a sex scandal - a product of De Niro's own TriBeCa company. Two of these were supporting roles. "I like to do a supporting part," he said, "because you can go a little further. A cameo can be more lively."
In the 1990s, as the De Niro roles have multiplied, so has critical hostility. The Observer likened him to "an ageing sportsman who's still got the skill but none of the ambition", while the Telegraph said much of his recent work seemed "to have been done by an impostor hired to raise money".
The mixed reception for his new work is in stark comparison to the run of films that made him the actor's actor in incendiary lead roles, from Mean Streets in 1973 to his oddball cameo period of the mid-1980s, when he would turn up briefly and memorably in the likes of Brazil, Angel Heart and The Untouchables. In these two decades, he received two Best Actor Oscars, for The Godfather II and Raging Bull, and four nominations.
The film-writer David Thomson summed up his unique screen presence: "He's as threatening and ungraspable as a sweet-faced madman who pours a torrent of talk over you on the subway." De Niro once told me: "I don't dislike critics. I've been kind of fortunate with them in the past. Sometimes they're the only people you can trust. They do try to be supportive, contrary to what you hear. But when critics say nasty things, they do it with a vehemence. They make you angry.
"I'm not going to defend myself. I get paid well, I'm happy. A writer writes with a pen, an artist works with his own materials, but when you make a movie it costs money and you're lucky to be doing it. If it works, great. I still feel that pressure of not wanting the company actually to lose money, but the important thing is that the movie lasts. When a scene's done right, it's always there. If it doesn't work - what are you going to do?" He said this after GoodFellas, however, the last film in which his performance gained universal praise. It was also the first interview, the start of his availability and the end of his years as an enigma. And the start of the dodgy years, some might say.
So what about now, after the critical brickbats? "I enjoy what I'm doing," he says. "Time can pass. Two years can go by and you haven't done anything. Which is OK, but for me at this point . . ." His voice trails away.
"I'm getting older [he's 55]. There are so many things I want to do, and I'm getting anxious whether I'll be able to do them." Does he worry about exposure? "Sometimes, maybe. But I spent a lot of time earlier in my career not doing anything, so I'm making up for lost time. And I have expenses, so I can be swayed." Such as maintaining the TriBeCa Film Centre, which he and a partner, former Warner executive Jane Rosenthal, set up in 1988 as a home for New York's film-making community.
An eight-storey New York landmark in a previously anonymous warehouse district, it includes post-production facilities, a screening room, the fashionable TriBeCa Grill and the offices of Miramax, the company that has transformed independent US cinema. The area has risen like a balloon as a result of the centre, and as its recent 10th anniversary approached, further expansion plans were in place. TriBeCa recently won film rights to the musical Rent and completed a mini-series on the life of mobster Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. The company's production record is a very mixed bag, with Night And The City - a disastrous re-make in which De Niro appeared with Jessica Lange - on the debit side. But the successes - artistic or financial - include De Niro's directing debut, A Bronx Tale, and films in which he appeared, such as Wag The Dog and Martin Scorsese's box-office hit Cape Fear.
Interestingly, for A Bronx Tale, his only film as director so far, he cast himself as the good, moral father of family. "That's another side of myself that I do believe exists. But psychos in pictures have their validity. They scare you, they take you on a ride - and then you come out at the end. You wake up and know it's not real. They are like dreams in a way." De Niro's box-office clout has never come near to his prestige, and he traditionally disparages money-oriented studios. As an entrepreneur, though, today's De Niro is a success story in different terms.
Being the defining movie icon of the 1970s had its price. In the days of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, every performance De Niro gave was an instant classic, prepared exhaustively. Famously, he flew to Sicily to listen to the locals read his lines for Godfather II, spent a year with the real Jake La Motta for Raging Bull and bought silk underwear from Al Capone's favourite shop for The Untouchables.
But today he shies away from questions about research and instead talks about his roles in terms of the number of weeks they'll take.
Does he still believe in the Method, for which he is famous? "A moment might come that something will flash in your head, and it'll make the take. That's my Method. The Method is whatever works for you, as long as you don't hurt yourself or anybody else." In Ronin, he plays one of a group of "ronin" (samurai or mercenaries by any other name) double-crossing each other in an ambiguous thriller directed by John Frankenheimer. "I'm not sure how people will perceive the movie. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do it, but I saw that Frankenheimer was trying to make the material more than it was." He plays a tough guy, a loner and enough of an anti-hero to bring up the perennial question about so often playing the bad guy.
"Actors have ethics the way anybody else does. In fact, you have to be more aware of where you stand ethically. I don't want to be delinquent - it's more constructive to go learn a language in Europe - but I do often get cast in darker roles, and that's generally more interesting than the hero unless he's written really strongly.
"Characters with a mixture of black and white are usually the more interesting," he once told me, "but the most important thing is to get the humanity." The best part of Ronin - car chases apart - may be his onscreen relationship with Jean Reno. "If you dance, he'll come and dance with you," Reno says. "A man full of finesse, depth, contained violence, but also . . . of perversity. A very secret guy. He'll give you what he thinks you need to work with him, and you will discover exactly what he wants you to."
His private life has been rather fraught over the past couple of years - a secret marriage to former air hostess Grace Hightower last summer, followed by reports this year that they are now living apart, followed by the arrangement to father twins (via a surrogate mother) with former girlfriend Toukie Smith.
Not surprisingly, he's wary of the press. Indeed, at the festival he's surrounded by security to fend off the paparazzi. "They're like hornets, like jackals. Do you walk into a hornet's nest and allow them to bite you? No, you go the other way. But where I live in New York, it's manageable. People are used to me by now. "I have my own life. I can't make myself available to every fan - it depends on the time, whether I'm busy. But I'm pretty nice to people one to one. I try to consider their feelings." It's true, too. At an earlier Venice, I remember him having drinks on the terrace of the Gritti Palace when two Japanese tourists wanted to take his picture. He said no. "I'm off duty - but sorry. How are you, good holiday?"
Is he worried about the quality of the parts he's offered these days? De Niro pauses. A long pause even by his standards. "It's all changed. It's difficult now." Which is an astonishing admission when you consider he has that history of threatening journalists who criticise his work. He mentions a couple of projects he is hopeful about - a TriBeCa movie in which he plays a Mafia boss who seeks help from psychiatrist Billy Crystal, and perhaps another one with his mentor Scorsese. De Niro's chief interest seems to lie elsewhere today. A second directing assignment is on the cards - he's been working on a script for some time. "But it has to be right. Especially for me." Does he actually enjoy acting now? "Yeah, I do. I'm so used to doing it that it's become more fun, because you don't worry about the things you know aren't important. But I really want to direct. Because directing makes one think a lot more and I have to involve myself - make my own decisions, my own mistakes. It's more consuming.
"The actor's the one who has to get up and do it - grovel in the mud and jump through hoops. The trade-off is you have a few days free. But if you're directing, you have no time from morning to night." He sounds pleased at the exhausting prospect, and you suddenly realise he's looking for that passion he no longer seems to find in acting.