Robert De Niro transforms into Bernie Madoff in new HBO show Wizard of Lies – first picture revealed
The first picture of Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer as Bernie and Ruth Madoff has surfaced online.
The two Hollywood heavyweights are starring in the HBO film Wizard of Lies, a dramatisation of how convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff was responsible for building one of the most infamous Ponzi schemes in history.
Madoff, who conned investors – including actors such as John Malkovich – out of around $65bn, is currently serving a 150 year prison sentence.
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The former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange took cash funnelled cash between wealthy speculators who all lost their investments when the fraud was revealed in 2008.
Madoff, who claimed Wall Street executives where aware of his scheme but did nothing to stop it, was eventually disowned by his family in 2010 following the suicide of his eldest son Mark.
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His downfall will provide suitably villainous material for De Niro, who is renowned for his incarnations of various gangsters and crooks.
HBO bought the book rights to an account of Madoff's scheme "Wizard of Lies" and "Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family".
