Traditionally, real-time requirements are expressed by means of deadlines, which are imposed by the environment on the system. This approach, however, is not well suited for expressing real-time requirements on the interaction between objects; such as found in distributed systems supporting autonomy of objects. This paper presents a coherent framework in which real-time requirements for such interacting objects can be expressed. Two interrelated system layers are considered together: the communication layer and the distributed programming layer that describes how interactions between the objects are organized. In particular, the paper evaluates the relationship between real-time requirements and real-time activities in distributed object-oriented systems.