Best Known As: Film Actor

Gist:  Robert Mario De Niro, Jr. (born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director, and producer.

De Niro is well known for his method acting and portrayals of conflicted, troubled characters and for his enduring collaboration with director Martin Scorsese. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1970s, culminating in his first Academy Award as best Supporting Actor for The Godfather Part II (1974), followed by a Best Actor Academy Award win for Raging Bull (1980). His film roles include the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, cabbie Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, mobster Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas and Jack Byrnes in Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers.

Life Facts:  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 of German, French, and Dutch descent. 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'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.

The son of artists, De Niro was raised in New York's Greenwich Village by his mother after his parents split up when he was two. Nicknamed "Bobby Milk" for his pallor, the youthful De Niro joined a Little Italy street gang, but the direction of his future had already been determined by his stage debut at age ten playing the Cowardly Lion in his school's production of The Wizard of Oz. Along with finding relief from shyness through performing, De Niro was also entranced by the movies, and he quit high school at age 16 to pursue acting. Studying under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, 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 (officially named The School of Performing Arts: A Division of the Fud H. La Guardia High School of Music and the Arts) was attended by fellow Godfather II actor Al Pacino. 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. He is considered, by many fans and critics alike, to be one of the greatest film actors of all time.

In 1993, De Niro made his directorial debut with A Bronx Tale. The film, written by Chazz Palminteri, was about Palminteri's turbulent childhood in the Bronx. De Niro agreed to direct the film after seeing Palminteri's one-man off-Broadway play. De Niro also played Lorenzo, the bus driver who struggles to keep his son away from local mobster Sonny, played by Palminteri.

De Niro hadn't directed another film until 2006's The Good Shepherd, which starred Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The Good Shepherd depicts the origins of the CIA, with Damon portraying one of the top counter-intelligence agents during World War II and the Cold War. De Niro has a small role as General Bill Donovan, who recruits Damon's character into the world of counter-intelligence.

A major plotpoint in each De Niro-helmed film involves a contentious interracial relationship: between Italian Calogero and African-American Jane in A Bronx Tale, and Edward Jr and Congolese Miriam in The Good Shepherd. De Niro himself has been romantically linked to several women of African descent.

De Niro, who lives in New York City, has been investing in the TriBeCa neighborhood in lower Manhattan since 1989. His capital ventures have included cofounding the film studio TriBeCa Productions; the popular TriBeCa Film Festival; Nobu and TriBeCa Grill, which he co-owns with Paul Wallace and Broadway producer Stewart F. Lane, 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 (De Niro also has residences on the east and west sides of Manhattan). Their son Elliot was born in 1998.

In addition to Elliot, De Niro has a son, Raphael, a former actor who now works in New York real estate 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.

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 Honor back to the ambassador, as soon as possible." French judicial sources say 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.

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. 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 co-star 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.

Career Facts:  De Niro's first film role in 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). The same year, he began his fruitful collaboration with Scorsese when he played a memorable role as the smalltime hood "Johnny Boy" alongside Harvey Keitel's "Charlie" in Mean Streets (1973). In 1974, De Niro played a pivotal role in Francis Coppola's The Godfather, Part II, playing young Don Vito Corleone, having previously auditioned for the roles of Sonny Corleone, Michael Corleone, Carlo Rizzi and Paulie Gatto in The Godfather. His performance earned him his first Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actor, although Coppola accepted the award, as De Niro was not present at the Oscar ceremony. He became the first actor to win an Academy Award speaking mainly a foreign language, in this case, multiple Sicilian dialects (although he delivered a few lines in English). De Niro and Marlon Brando, who played the older Vito Corleone in the first film, are the only actors to have won leading-role Oscars portraying the same fictional character.

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). They also acted together in Guilty by Suspicion and provided their voices for the animated feature Shark Tale.

In many of his films, De Niro has played charming sociopaths. Taxi Driver is particularly important to De Niro's career; his iconic performance as Travis Bickle shot him to stardom and forever linked De Niro's name with Bickle's famous "You talkin' to me?" monologue, which De Niro improvised.



In 1976, De Niro appeared (along with Gérard Depardieu and Donald Sutherland) in Bernardo Bertolucci's epic biographical exploration of life during World War II, Novecento (1900), seen through the eyes of two Italian childhood friends at the opposite sides of society's hierarchy.

In 1978, De Niro played "Michael Vronsky" in the acclaimed Vietnam War film The Deer Hunter, for which he was nominated Best Actor in a Leading Role.