She had a vague awareness of who De Niro was, though Scorsese had passed her by. She was cast after three months of arriving at 5.30pm every day for read-throughs with Scorsese and Robert de Niro. At the time, she was waitressing at a burger bar and working as a receptionist in Manhattan’s garment district. Moriarty sent the picture, then forgot about it. A few weeks later, a passing actor said she should send it to the casting director of a film he was making. When she won, her photograph was pinned up at the bar. But there would be a conversation.”ĭavid Beckham in Outlaws. Would her mother be happy for her to act? She grimaces. Little Cathy’s younger sister is, Moriarty says, “the artistic one, with the singing and the plays”. One of the twins is here today, a dark-haired girl introduced as little Cathy, who mostly stays glued to her phone. She talks gamely about the pleasures of working with Beckham, a “gem” whose kids bonded with hers she has 15-year-old twins and a 14-year-old daughter. Playing an earthy waitress – the kind of part she gets a lot these days – Moriarty is excellent. The star, however, is David Beckham, asked to brood silently in a £1,000 leather jacket. As evidence of modern marketing budgets, a cast including Moriarty and Harvey Keitel decamped to Mexico to appear in a stylised stew of freak show and biker imagery. It’s a 15-minute short called Outlaws, made for the British luxury sportswear label Belstaff. The latest movie in her strange, stop-start career won’t leave her much time to make an exit. “They make you sit through some – but you can always go to the bathroom.” And it’s not just Raging Bull: she’s never seen most of the films she’s made. Now 54, she is still a presence, strikingly tall, honey blonde hair. Martin Scorsese’s 1980 film captured her in timeless black and white, in a masterpiece for her first role.

Raging bull robert deniro