Robert De Niro, one of the greatest American actors of all time (minus, oh, the last 15 years), spent time with a local gentleman named Ernie, a heating and air conditioning repairman, to learn how to do a Philly accent. Ernie is Bradley Cooper's uncle, and was on the set of The Silver Linings Playbook, Cooper's new movie, while they were filming. De Niro asked Ernie to read the script out loud to him—the whole script. Intimidating, right? Not necessarily. As Cooper tells David Letterman: "But the Philadelphia mentality, you know, they're pretty confident, and when we walked out, he goes, 'We'll see if he does it as good.'"
[Hat tip to Around Philly.]