Robert Mario "Bob" De Niro, Jr. (August 17, 1943) is a two-time Academy Award-winning American film actor, director and producer.
De Niro was born in New York City, the son of Virginia Admiral, a painter, and Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor. De Niro's father was of Italian and Irish descent, and his mother was a Presbyterian-raised atheist of German, French, and Dutch descent.
Due to his small, skinny frame and pale complexion he was nick named Bobby Milk. His Italian great-grandparents, Giovanni De Niro and Angelina Mercurio, emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of Campobasso, Molise, and his paternal grandmother, Helen O'Reilly, was the granddaughter of Edward O'Reilly, an emigrant from Ireland. De Niro has said that he identifies more with his Italian parts than his other ones.
De Niro's parents, who had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts, divorced when he was two years old. De Niro grew up in the Little Italy area of Manhattan.
De Niro first attended the Little Red School House and was then enrolled by his mother at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art in New York, a division of which was attended by fellow Godfather II actor Al Pacino. He dropped out at the age of 13 and joined a Little Italy street gang. De Niro attended the Stella Adler Conservatory as well as Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio, and used his membership there mostly as a professional advantage.
De Niro's first film role and collaboration with Brian De Palma materialized in 1963 at the age of 20, when he appeared in The Wedding Party; however, the film was not released until 1969. He spent much of the 1960s working in theater workshops and off-Broadway productions. He was an extra in the French film Three Rooms in Manhattan (1965) and made his official film debut after he reunited with De Palma in Greetings (1968). He later reprised his Greetings role in Hi, Mom (1970).
He gained popular attention with his role as a dying Major League baseball player in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). After working with Scorsese in Mean Streets, he had a very successful working relationship with the director in films such as Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and Casino (1995). De Niro's brand of method acting includes employing whatever extreme tactic he feels is necessary to elicit the best performance from those he is acting with. During the filming of The King of Comedy, for example, he directed a slew of anti-Semitic epithets at costar Jerry Lewis in order to enhance and authenticate the anger demonstrated by his onscreen character. Fearing he had become typecast in mob roles, De Niro began expanding into occasional comedic roles in the mid-1980s and has had much success there as well, with such films as Brazil (1985) (in which he had a small role); the hit action-comedy Midnight Run (1988), Showtime (2002), opposite Eddie Murphy; the film-and-sequel pairs Analyze This (1999) & Analyze That (2002), both opposite actor/comedian Billy Crystal, Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004). In 1993, De Niro made his directorial debut with A Bronx Tale. He directed The Good Shepherd (2006), and costarred with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The movie also reunited him onscreen with Joe Pesci, with whom De Niro had starred in Raging Bull, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale, Once Upon A Time In America and Casino.
In June 2006, it was announced that De Niro had donated his film archive - including scripts, costumes, and props - to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. De Niro has said that he is working with Martin Scorsese on a new project. "I'm trying to actually work... Eric Roth and myself and Marty are working on a script now, trying to get it done."
De Niro has won two Academy Awards: Best Actor for his role in Raging Bull, and Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather, Part II.
De Niro and Marlon Brando are the only actors who won Academy Awards for portraying the same character: Brando won for playing the elderly Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, while De Niro later won the award for playing the young Vito in The Godfather, Part II. Brando and De Niro came together onscreen for the only time in The Score (2001). De Niro actually auditioned for the role of Sonny in the first Godfather, but the role was given to James Caan. When The Godfather, Part II was in preproduction, the director, Francis Ford Coppola, remembered De Niro's audition and cast him to play the young Vito Corleone. De Niro is one of only five people to win an Academy Award for working in a foreign language, as he almost exclusively spoke Italian, with very few phrases in English.
"CBS has made a deal with Tribeca Prods. to develop three pilots that will be executive produced by Tribeca partners Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal. The deal gives Tribeca a guarantee that one of the three projects will be produced as a series pilot. The first project, to be produced in partnership by Media Rights Capital, is an hourlong pilot that will be written by William Monahan, the Oscar-winning writer of The Departed who will make his first foray into TV with an untitled drama set in New York. Monahan, who recently scripted Body of Lies and Edge of Darkness, is writing the pilot targeted for the Eye's fall 2009 sked. Rosenthal wouldn't reveal the subject matter. Tribeca continues to develop Little Fockers and The Undomestic Goddess for Universal Pictures, and Frankie Machine at Paramount, with Michael Mann attached to direct and De Niro to star.
Since 1989, De Niro has been investing in the TriBeCa neighborhood in lower Manhattan. His capital ventures have included cofounding the film studio TriBeCa Productions; the popular TriBeCa Film Festival; Nobu (the now-defunct Layla restaurants that usually needed advance reservations) and TriBeCa Grill, which he co-owns with Paul Wallace and Broadway producer Stewart F. Lane. and finally The Greenwich Hotel.
In 1997, De Niro married his second wife, Grace Hightower (a former flight attendant), at their estate near Marbletown in upstate New York. Their son Elliot was born in 1998, and the couple filed for divorce shortly after his birth, although the action was never officially finalized as they smoothed over their differences.
In addition to Elliot, De Niro has a son, Raphael, with first wife Diahnne Abbott. He also adopted Abbott's daughter (from a previous relationship), Drena. In addition, he has twin sons, Julian Henry and Aaron Kendrick (conceived by in vitro fertilization and delivered by a surrogate mother), from a long-term live-in relationship with former model Toukie Smith. Raphael, a former actor, now works in New York real estate. De Niro lives in New York City and has never lived full time in Los Angeles.
In February 1998, during a film shoot in France, he was taken in for questioning by French police for nine hours and was then questioned by a magistrate over a prostitution ring. De Niro denied any involvement, saying that he had never paid for sex, "...and even if I had, it wouldn't have been a crime." The magistrate wanted to speak to him after his name was mentioned by one of the call girls. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he said, "I will never return to France. I will advise my friends against going to France," and he would "send your Legion of Honour back to the ambassador, as soon as possible." French judicial sources say that the actor is regarded as a potential witness, not a suspect.
In 2003, De Niro was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The prognosis for De Niro (who was 60 at the time) was good, according to his publicist, Stan Rosenfield. "Doctors say the condition was detected at an early stage because of regular checkups," Rosenfield says. "Because of the early detection and his excellent physical condition, doctors project a full recovery." Rosenfield declined to give further details about the actor's condition or course of treatment. De Niro's father, painter Robert De Niro, Sr. died of cancer in 1993 at age 71. He also left behind his two god children, Lauren and Nicholas Martino. After the death of his father De Niro took the responsibility of being the "unofficial godfather".
De Niro was due to be bestowed with honorary Italian citizenship at the Venice Film Festival in September 2004. However, the Sons of Italy lodged a protest with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, claiming De Niro had damaged the image of Italians and Italian-Americans by frequently portraying them in criminal roles. Culture Minister Giuliano Urbani dismissed the objections, and the ceremony was rescheduled to go forward in Rome in October. Controversy flared again when De Niro failed to show for two media appearances in Italy that month, which De Niro blamed on "serious communication problems" that weren't "handled properly" on his end, stating, "The last thing I would want to do is offend anyone. I love Italy." The citizenship was conferred on De Niro on October 21, 2006, during the finale of the Rome Film Festival.
De Niro is a supporter of the Democratic Party, and vocally supported Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. Filmmaker Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 includes a clip of De Niro standing next to Gore at a rally; Moore identifies him as "that Taxi Driver guy." De Niro publicly supported John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. In 1998, he lobbied Congress against impeaching President Bill Clinton. De Niro also narrated 9/11, a documentary about the September 11, 2001 attacks, shown on CBS and centering on video footage made by Jules and Gedeon Naudet that focused on the role of firefighters following the attacks. While promoting his movie The Good Shepherd with costar Matt Damon on the December 8, 2006 episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews at George Mason University, De Niro was asked whom he would like to see as President of the United States. De Niro responded, "Well, I think of two people: Hillary Clinton and Obama." On February 4, 2008, De Niro supported Obama at a rally at the Izod Center in New Jersey before Super Tuesday.