What to expect from HBO's Bernie Madoff biopic 'The Wizard of Lies'

— -- What’s the secret to being one of the most lauded actors and filmmakers of our time?

“Hard work,” says Jane Rosenthal, the woman behind Tribeca Enterprises, the multi-platform media company responsible for the Tribeca Film Festival, which she co-founded in 2001 alongside Robert De Niro, following the attacks on the World Trade Center.

“Somebody asked me last night about what’s the magic of [Robert] De Niro's acting. And I was just like there's no magic. It's called hard work,” Rosenthal tells Rebecca Jarvis on the latest episode of ABC Radio's “No Limits with Rebecca Jarvis” podcast.

“He [De Niro] works so hard to perform down to every little nuance,” she tells Jarvis, “Nothing just comes to you.”

Rosenthal, who left a senior job in Hollywood nearly two decades ago to create her own production company, Tribeca Productions, with De Niro, is no stranger to hard work.

Having just come off her most successful Tribeca Film Festival, with more than 150,000 attendees, Rosenthal is now turning that focus to “The Wizard of Lies,” an HBO film about the Bernie Madoff scandal, directed by Barry Levinson, starring De Niro as Madoff and Michelle Pfeiffer as his wife, Ruth.

Nearly 10 years after Madoff was arrested for one of the largest financial frauds in U.S history, Rosenthal says she’s looking at his story through the prism of family.

“Had we done it a few years earlier it would have been more about the actual Ponzi scheme and Madoff hurt a lot of people,” she tells Jarvis. “[You see] what it's like to grow up with a man who is a sociopath, who is the man, who teaches the father that teaches the sons, right from wrong and good from bad?”

“The Wizard of Lies” premieres on HBO May 20th at 8:00 PM ET. Hear more of Rosenthal’s story, including why she left Hollywood, and her advice to young filmmakers on ABC Radio’s top business podcast, “No Limits with Rebecca Jarvis”