Robert De Niro is reportedly working at an “unsustainable pace” to fund his divorce.

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The actor’s lawyer Caroline Strauss appeared in court last Friday (April 16), per the Independent, saying De Niro has had to “take every project that comes along” and “work six-day weeks, 12-hour days”.

“Mr De Niro is 77 years old,” Krauss said during a virtual hearing for the ongoing divorce case against Grace Hightower. “While he loves his craft, he should not be forced to work at this prodigious pace because he has to.

“When does that stop? When does he get the opportunity to not take every project that comes along and not work six-day weeks, 12-hour days so he can keep pace with Ms Hightower’s thirst for Stella McCartney? He could get sick tomorrow, and the party’s over.”

The prenuptial agreement established before De Niro and and Hightower split means that De Niro must pay his ex-wife £716,00 a year while he earns more than £10.7million.

However, the agreement has not yet come into action meaning that the couple are still disagreeing over how much De Niro should be paying Hightower until then.

Elsewhere, it was recently revealed that De Niro was initially cast in Tom Hanks’ role in Big. 

“It fell apart because he had a scheduling conflict, and then they went to Tom Hanks,” the film’s co-star Elizabeth Perkins explained. “It’s like a totally different movie in my brain with Robert De Niro.”

She added of De Niro’s take: “He was more moody. It was more of a – a little more of a horror movie. Robert De Niro wandering around the streets of New York. What Tom Hanks brought to it was so much lighter.”