The most celebrated American film actor of his era, Robert De Niro won an Oscar as best supporting actor for The Godfather, Part II in 1974. Over the next few decades he became known for his intense portrayals of mobsters, tough guys, loners and other not-quite-socially-adjusted characters, and equally well known for his single-minded commitment to acting. (The latter reputation was sealed when he packed on 50 pounds to play boxer Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese's 1980 film Raging Bull, for which he won another Oscar as best actor.) De Niro has worked often with Scorsese, in films including Mean Streets (1973), the now-famous Taxi Driver (1976, with De Niro as the scary loner Travis Bickle), Goodfellas (1990, with Joe Pesci) and Casino (1995, with Sharon Stone). He has also done comedy in films like Midnight Run (1988) and Wag The Dog (1997, with Dustin Hoffman), and spoofed his tough-guy reputation in Analyze This (1999) and as an ex-CIA father-in-law in Meet The Parents (2000, with Ben Stiller). Not lacking whimsy, De Niro has also played character roles of all sorts, including an offbeat ex-con in Jackie Brown and a comical fantasy pirate in Stardust (2007). He directed the family drama A Bronx Tale (1993) and the modern spy story The Good Shepherd (2006, with Matt Damon). He founded the TriBeCa Film Center in Manhattan in 1989, and created the TriBeCa film festival in 2002 as a response to the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
De Niro played young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II; an older version of Corleone was played by Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972). Brando also won an Oscar, as best actor, for the role.
(born Aug. 17, 1943, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. film actor. He made his debut in 1968 and played in minor films until his critically acclaimed performance in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). He starred in Mean Streets (1973) and other films directed by Martin Scorsese, including Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980, Academy Award), and GoodFellas (1990). Noted for his intensely committed performances, he also starred in The Godfather, Part II (1974, Academy Award), The Deer Hunter (1978), Once upon a Time in America (1984), Heat (1997), and Meet the Parents (2000). He directed his first film, A Bronx Tale, in 1993.
One of the greatest American actors of his generation, Robert De Niro (born 1943) is known for his total immersion in roles. Whether driving a cab to prepare for "Taxi Driver" or gaining 60 pounds to play boxer Jake La Motta in "Raging Bull", De Niro studies his characters intensely. The Oscar-winning actor is best known for his roles in gangster-related films such as "The Godfather, Part II".
In a 1976 interview, De Niro explained his approach to preparing for a role. "Actors must expose themselves to the surroundings and keep their minds obsessed with that," he said. " … I always look at everything…. If you don't practice, you don't know your subject and it can't be natural … You've got to physically and mentally become that person you are portraying."
Bobby Milk
De Niro was born in New York City on August 17, 1943. His father, Robert De Niro Sr., was a sculptor, painter and poet. His mother, Virginia Admiral, also sold paintings. His parents had a salon in Greenwich Village that attracted other artists and intellectuals. They divorced when their son was a young child. As he approached adolescence, De Niro was shy and sickly looking. His pale complexion earned him the nickname "Bobby Milk" in the ethnic neighborhood of "Little Italy," where he grew up. His first stage role, at age ten, was as the cowardly lion in a local production of The Wizard of Oz.
At the age of 16, De Niro got his first paying role, in a production of Chekhov's The Bear . He was hooked. Dropping out of high school just a few credits short of graduation, he studied Method acting under Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. For the next 14 years De Niro performed off-Broadway, in dinner theaters, in touring productions, and occasionally in television commercials and small films.
Director Brian De Palma gave De Niro his start in films.. He cast the young New Yorker in the little-noticed, small-budget films The Wedding Party, Greetings, and Hi, Mom! In Greetings De Niro had the lead role as a draft dodger. Soon, actress Shelley Winters took him under her wing. She helped him land a part in the low-budget Roger Corman film Bloody Mama. He played one of the sons of her character, the legendary killer Ma Barker. De Niro prepared by spending weeks in the Ozark Mountains, perfecting an Arkansas dialect. De Niro next appeared in a string of poorly received films, including Jennifer on My Mind, Born to Win, and The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Though the movies were panned, some film critics started to notice his exceptional performances.
"You Talkin' to Me?"
In 1973, De Niro, who was turning 30, finally won widespread acclaim with two remarkable performances. He portrayed a dying baseball pitcher in Bang the Drum Slowly . De Niro had never played baseball and wasn't an athlete but, through constant practice, intense study of ballplayers in person and on film, and reading books about baseball, he made his performance believable. Later that year, De Niro appeared as a nervous, explosive young hoodlum in Mean Streets, the first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorcese, a contemporary who also grew up on New York's Lower East Side. The authenticity of his performance was startling. It "looked as if a rogue had come in off the streets," wrote biographer David Thomson, and the portrayal seemed "an assertion of how out of conventional control he was."
In 1974, De Niro was cast as the young Vito Corleone in Francis Coppola's blockbusterThe Godfather, Part II. He prepared by studying the Sicilian dialect for weeks and by striving to capture the accent and mannerisms of Marlon Brando, who had played the older Corleone in the original Godfather. "De Niro is right to be playing the young Brando because he has the physical audacity, the grace and the instinct to become a great actor," wrote critic Pauline Kael. The breakthrough role, in which he speaks only 17 words of English, won De Niro the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
De Niro continued gaining critical acclaim with his role as the cab driver Travis Bickle in Scorcese's Taxi Driver in 1976. His Oscar-nominated portrait of a bigoted, vengeful Vietnam veteran was an iconic performance. To prepare for the role, De Niro lost 35 pounds and listened repeatedly to a taped reading of the diaries of assassin Arthur Bremer, who shot presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972. He also got a provisional cab driver's license and drove around New York for several weeks.
De Niro's gutsy, disturbing performance drove the controversial film. "The genius of the acting consists of De Niro's refusal to simplify," wrote Thomson. "He never opts for sacred monster or shaman. The long, lone sequences establish an hallucinatory confessional with the audience…" Playing with his gun and practicing his bravado in front of a mirror - a scene the actor improvised - De Niro tries out the memorable line: "You talkin' to me?" The phrase became an enduring part of the American lexicon - shorthand for a fed-up, won't-take-it-anymore attitude and a code for white male rage. "It is a picture of a man on the brink of the abyss which is both chilling and comical," wrote biographer Andy Dougan.
Disappeared into Roles
Over the next quarter-century, De Niro would become one of the most prolific and celebrated actors in Hollywood. He was known for immersing himself in his roles - so much so that for many years he often went unrecognized in public. One of De Niro's acclaimed early portrayals came in the controversial, Oscar-winning Vietnam War drama The Deer Hunter, in which he played a redneck steelworker traumatized by his combat experiences. To grow into the role, he entered the world of Ohio Valley steel mills. "I talked with the mill workers, I drank and ate with them, and I played pool with them," De Niro explained. "I tried to come as close to being a steelworker as possible. I wanted to work a shift at the mill, but they wouldn't let me." De Niro's penchant for authenticity nearly cost him his life during the filming. Shooting combat scenes in Thailand, he and co-star John Savage were almost killed while doing their own stunt work, dropping from a flying helicopter's runners into a river.
Critics were astounded by the intensity of De Niro's tight-lipped character. Thomson wrote: " The Deer Hunter would not have existed without De Niro's fierce generation of pain and honor…" De Niro was nominated for another Academy Award and might have won it were it not for overwhelming public sympathy for Peter Finch, who had starred in Network and then died before the Oscar voting.
In 1980, De Niro finally won a Best Actor award from the Academy voters for his portrayal of boxer Jake La Motta in Scorcese's Raging Bull . Before filming began, he took a year's worth of boxing lessons and spent months at the real Jake La Motta's apartment, absorbing everything he could about the man. After the film's early scenes were shot with a lean, trim De Niro, production stopped while De Niro literally grew into the part of the fighter as an older, obese man. By eating his way across France and Italy, he gained 60 pounds in two months. De Niro explained after the filming: "I just can't fake acting. I know movies are an illusion and the first rule is to fake it, but not for me. I'm too curious. I want to deal with all the facts of the character, thin or fat…. Just by having the weight on, it really made me feel a certain way and behave in a certain way…. It was a little like going to a foreign land."
The result was an intensely personal performance. "He put on not just weight, but the burden of degradation," noted Thomson. "While in the ring, he was a terrifying spectacle, as credible as any movie boxer has ever been…. In the scenes with Cathy Moriarty, and with the 'guys,' there were remarkable insights into sexual insecurity or ambivalence."
Branching Out
Once established as a star, De Niro refused to settle for sure box-office hits. Continually testing his range, he made a number of unusual role choices, including a romantic comedy with Meryl Streep, Falling in Love, which bombed with critics and at the box office. Though he is most closely associated with a gangster persona, De Niro's roles have varied widely. They include a struggling musician in the unsuccessful Scorcese musical New York, New York and an incarnation of Lucifer in Alan Parker's black comedy Angel Heart (for which De Niro grew long hair and a beard and studied the most evil men in history). He also portrayed the Frankenstein creature in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ;an unfunny would-be comedian in The King of Comedy, a drug-addicted ex-felon in Jackie Brown ; a repressed priest in True Confessions ; and a catatonic patient in Awakenings.
De Niro specialized in difficult, complex characters who represented the dark side of human nature. In 1991, he received another Oscar nomination for his role as a loathsome ex-felon in Cape Fear. Thomson wrote: "His character was so intricately nasty, so repellent, and so clever, that one wondered if the actor hadn't developed too much devil worship." After appearing as gangster Al Capone in De Palma's The Untouchables, De Niro explained: "I prefer the so-called evil because it is more realistic. Good characters or characters who are only positive tend to be unbelievable and boring."
Tedium was unlikely on film sets with De Niro. His intensity was contagious. "When De Niro walks on the set, you can feel his presence, but he never behaves like a movie star, just an actor," said Parker. "And when he acts, his sheer concentration permeates the whole set."
Italian director Sergio Leone cast De Niro as a gangster in his epic Once Upon a Time in America . After the filming was completed Leone said: "I don't consider Bob so much an actor as an incarnation of the character he is playing. Until he feels like that he can't go on the set…. No one is better than De Niro at being studied and spontaneous at the same time."
Appearing in flops and hits, De Niro remained productive and unpredictable. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as a bounty hunter in the lightweight 1989 hit Midnight Run . He returned often to his favorite director Scorcese, playing a mob character in Goodfellas and a gambler in Casino . He played a gangster in Heat and a hit man in Ronin . He spoofed his own persona as a mob boss in the comedy Analyze This and as a hard-nosed ex-intelligence agent in Meet the Parents.
Despite his fame, De Niro has remained extremely protective of his personal life and distrustful of interviewers and photographers. "I liken them to assassins," he once said. In 1976, De Niro married singer-actress Diahnne Abbott. They had a son and a daughter before divorcing. He also had twin sons, born via a surrogate mother, with actress Toukie Smith. De Niro was also romantically linked to model Naomi Campbell, singer Whitney Houston, and actress Uma Thurman. In 1997, he married flight attendant Grace Hightower.
Tribeca Film Center
Seeking new challenges, De Niro founded the Tribeca Film Center in a renovated Manhattan coffee factory in 1989. On the first two floors he opened a restaurant, the Tribeca Grill, in which he displayed his father's paintings. De Niro eventually became part-owner of several upscale New York restaurants.
From his new headquarters De Niro produced his first film, Neil Jordan's remake of We're No Angels, in which he also starred. In 1993, De Niro won critical acclaim for directing and playing opposite Chazz Palminteri in the latter's autobiographical film A Bronx Tale. Also that year, he produced a television series Tribeca, which was cancelled after seven episodes. In 1999, he produced the movie Entropy.
Throughout his career, De Niro has tested his own limits-often going to extreme limits in order to be true to his character. To De Niro, acting has always been a way of expanding horizons. More than 60 film roles in 37 years attest to his willingness to take risks. "Acting is a cheap way to do things that you would not dare to do yourself," he once explained.
Books
Dougan, Andy, Untouchable: A Biography of Robert De Niro, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1996.
Thomson, David, A Biographical Dictionary of Film, Knopf, 1994.
De Niro, Robert (də nĭr'ō), 1943-, American film actor, b. New York City. After studying for the stage, he acted in films directed by Brian De Palma. In 1973 he made his first major movies, Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets. In these and other motion pictures he has shown an impressive dramatic range and expressiveness. His other films include The Godfather Part II (1974; Academy Award), Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1979), Raging Bull (1980; Academy Award), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), Casino (1995), Wag the Dog (1997), and The Good Shepherd (2006), a finely crafted espionage drama that De Niro also directed.
Career Highlights: GoodFellas, Brazil, Raging Bull
First Major Screen Credit: Greetings (1968)
Biography
Considered the best actor of his generation, Robert De Niro has built a durable star career out of his formidable ability to disappear into a character, whether tempering his charisma to become a believable everyman or imbuing his renowned gallery of mobsters and psychopaths with a compelling, frightening authority. After rising to stardom in the 1970s with landmark performances as violent New York brutes in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and Raging Bull (1980), not to mention his quietly bravura turn in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II (1974), De Niro appeared to falter in the 1980s. Rejuvenated after The Untouchables (1987) and Goodfellas (1990), as well as the founding of the Tribeca Film Center, De Niro picked up his pace in the 1990s, strengthening his fame into the 2000s with his hilarious self-parodies in the blockbuster comedies Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000).
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 espoused the Method tenets that guided the work of such trailblazing 1950s stars as Marlon Brando, learning how to immerse himself in a character emotionally and physically. While he labored in off-off-Broadway productions in the early '60s, De Niro was cast alongside fellow novice Jill Clayburgh in film school graduate Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party (1969). It didn't see the light of theaters, however, until the late '60s. His movie breakthrough seemingly limited to a brief walk-on in Marcel Carné's Trois Chambres à Manhattan (1965), De Niro returned to theater in the mid-'60s. His luck began to change when De Palma asked De Niro to star as one of three friends trying to dodge the Vietnam draft in his low-budget satire Greetings (1968). A small indie success, Greetings spawned a sequel, Hi, Mom! (1970), featuring De Niro as an oddball downtown voyeur-turned-quasi-radical bomber. With another small movie, Sam's Song (1969), to his credit and the backing of friend Shelley Winters, De Niro got a shot at "going Hollywood" late-'60s style with a role as one of the murderous Barker clan in the Bonnie and Clyde (1967) rip-off Bloody Mama (1970), a well-acted Roger Corman special. Though he followed Bloody Mama with three more movies, including playing a taxi driver in drug drama Jennifer on My Mind (1971) and replacing Al Pacino in the ill-conceived farce The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971), De Niro found himself back doing off-Broadway theater by 1972.
De Niro's professional life took an auspicious turn, however, when he was re-introduced to former Little Italy acquaintance Martin Scorsese at a party in 1972. Sharing a love of movies as well as their neighborhood background, De Niro and Scorsese hit it off; De Niro was immediately interested when Scorsese asked him about appearing in his new film, Mean Streets. Conceived as a grittier, more authentic portrait of the Mafia as a collection of petty street hoods rather than The Godfather's (1972) wealthy dons, Mean Streets drew on Scorsese's neighborhood experiences in its story of Harvey Keitel's conflicted striver Charlie and his ruinous friendship with De Niro's volatile Johnny Boy. Though he initially didn't want the part, De Niro transformed Johnny Boy into an indelible combination of anarchic energy and violent stupidity, from the moment he blew up a mail box onscreen, through his humorous improvised monologue about Joey Clams to his bloody end. Though Mean Streets failed to catch on outside of cities, its assured style and superb acting turned Scorsese and De Niro into rising artistic stars. De Niro caught the critics' attention again that same year with his completely different performance as a dying, simple-minded catcher in the quiet baseball drama Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). Though the New York Film Critics' Circle gave De Niro the Best Supporting Actor prize for both roles, the Academy ignored him. Nevertheless, Francis Ford Coppola was impressed enough by Mean Streets to cast De Niro as the young Vito Corleone in the early 1900s portion of The Godfather Pt. II. Closely studying Brando's Oscar-winning performance as Don Corleone in The Godfather, and perfecting his accent for speaking his lines in subtitled Sicilian, De Niro was so effective as the lethally ambitious and lovingly paternal Corleone that he created Oscar history when he took home an acting prize, albeit Best Supporting, for playing Vito.
Rather than cash in on his Godfather success, however, De Niro headed to Europe to star in Bernardo Bertolucci's opus 1900 (1976). A sprawling allegory about class struggle in 20th century Italy, 1900's expansive story hinged on the lifelong relationship between De Niro's rich landowner and his proletarian best friend (Gérard Depardieu). Cut down to a mere four hours for its American release in 1977, 1900 impressed critics more with its sumptuous visuals than its content; the restored five-hour, 20-minute version attracted more kudos in 1991.
After 1900's equally epic shoot, De Niro returned to the U.S. to collaborate with Scorsese on the far leaner (and meaner) production Taxi Driver. After working for two weeks as a Manhattan cabbie and losing weight, De Niro transformed himself into disturbed "God's lonely man" Travis Bickle. An extreme study in urban alienation, De Niro's Vietnam vet Bickle was painfully awkward with people, whether hanging out with fellow cabbie Peter Boyle, disastrously courting Cybill Shepherd, or trying to verbally save Jodie Foster. Once he began preening in front of the mirror with his weapons and issuing his reflection the signature "You talkin' to me?" challenge, however, Bickle became frighteningly alive before descending into the climactic ultra-violent bloodbath. One of the definitive films of the decade, Taxi Driver earned the Cannes Film Festival's top prize, good box office, and several Oscar nominations including Best Picture and De Niro's first nod for Best Actor. Controversy erupted about the film's violence, however, when would-be Presidential assassin John W. Hinckley cited Taxi Driver as a formative influence in 1981.
Seeking a change of pace, De Niro next starred as refined, doomed Irving Thalberg-esque movie producer Monroe Stahr in Elia Kazan's final movie, the adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon (1976). Though the film failed, it was De Niro, along with Scorsese, who faced a potentially hostile audience to present Kazan with his honorary Oscar in 1999. De Niro and Scorsese met with another brand of hostility in 1977 with the release of Scorsese's lavish, underrated musical New York, New York (1977). Though De Niro and co-star Liza Minnelli made an excellent, contentious pair, New York, New York's downbeat take on the genre found little audience favor. De Niro quickly recovered with another risky, ambitious project, Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978). One of the first wave of Vietnam movies, The Deer Hunter starred De Niro as one of three Pennsylvania steel-town friends thrown into the war's inferno, emerging as profoundly changed men. Though the film provoked an uproar over its portrayal of Viet Cong violence as (literally) Russian roulette, The Deer Hunter won several Oscars including Best Picture; De Niro lost Best Actor to Jon Voight's turn as a Vietnam vet in Coming Home (1978).
Returning to the realm of more personal violence, De Niro followed The Deer Hunter with his and Scorsese's masterpiece, Raging Bull. Though Scorsese suffered a physical breakdown after New York, New York, De Niro convinced his friend that Raging Bull could be the de facto cure, and the pair reworked Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin's initial adaptation of boxer Jake La Motta's autobiography. With Rocky's (1976) producers backing them, Scorsese and De Niro went to creative extremes to do justice to La Motta's capacity for taking a beating in the ring and living brutally outside it, revealing the blood on the ropes and refusing to gloss over Jake's spousal abuse. Along with his notorious 60-pound weight gain that rendered him unrecognizable as the middle-aged Jake, De Niro also trained so intensely for the outstanding fight scenes that La Motta himself averred that De Niro could have boxed professionally. Along with his physical dedication, De Niro won over critics with his ability to humanize La Motta without softening him; though some were put off by La Motta's repugnance, none could deny that Scorsese and De Niro had created an extraordinary biopic and Raging Bull received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. After Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan the day of the Oscars, De Niro attended the re-scheduled ceremony and pointedly noted at the end of his acceptance speech for his richly deserved Best Actor statuette, "I love everybody."
Not coincidentally, De Niro's next film with Scorsese, The King of Comedy (1983), delved into the dark recesses of fandom. Though De Niro was remarkable as creepy comedian wannabe Rupert Pupkin, The King of Comedy's incisive dissection of celebrity and TV proved too bleakly acerbic for audiences; Scorsese and De Niro decided to part creative ways afterwards. De Niro's subsequent mid-'80s movies continued to fall short. Though he was well suited to star in Sergio Leone's epic homage to gangster films, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Leone's tough, transcendent vision couldn't survive the studio's decision to hack 88 minutes out of the American release version, and it bombed. De Niro's cameo as a militant repairman was also subsumed by the offscreen theatrics attending the production and release of Terry Gilliam's fantasy Brazil (1985). De Niro's attempt at playing a "normal" romantic lead opposite Meryl Streep in Falling in Love (1984) failed to attract an audience; noble subject matter, spectacular visuals, and Cannes' Palme D'Or couldn't turn The Mission (1986) into an American hit. After his turn as the Devil in the controversial disappointment Angel Heart (1987), De Niro took a breather from films to return to the stage, playing a drug dealer in the New York Public Theater production Cuba and His Teddy Bear. During his theater stint, De Palma made De Niro a movie offer he couldn't refuse when he asked him to play a small role in his film version of The Untouchables (1987). As the rotund, charismatic, bat-wielding Al Capone, De Niro was a memorable adversary for Kevin Costner's upstanding Elliot Ness, and The Untouchables became De Niro's first hit in almost a decade. De Niro followed The Untouchables with his first comedy success, Midnight Run (1988). Co-starring as a bounty hunter opposite Charles Grodin's bail-jumping accountant, De Niro finally got to show his lighter side, and the hilarious pair turned Midnight Run into a summer sleeper hit. De Niro's next foray into comedy in We're No Angels (1989), however, was not so appealing.
His movie stardom revitalized, De Niro founded Manhattan's Tribeca Film Center in 1989. Housing ascendant indie Miramax as well as De Niro's own Tribeca Productions, the Film Center also included a restaurant co-owned by De Niro and decorated with his father's art. From this base of operations, De Niro launched into the most prolific period of his career. Though he earned an Oscar nomination for his touching performance as a coma patient in Penny Marshall's popular drama Awakenings (1990), movie fans were perhaps more thrilled by De Niro's return to the Scorsese fold, playing cruelly duplicitous Irish mobster Jimmy "The Gent" opposite Ray Liotta's turncoat Henry Hill in the critically lauded Mafia film Goodfellas (1990). Along with appearing onscreen with Scorsese as directors fighting the black list in Guilty by Suspicion (1991), De Niro worked with Scorsese again in the thriller remake Cape Fear (1991). Sporting a hillbilly accent and pumped-up physique, De Niro's vengeful rapist Max Cady was a terrifying creation, particularly in his quietly creepy seduction scene with Juliette Lewis. Despite critics' grumblings that De Niro was perhaps too flamboyant, Cape Fear became Scorsese and De Niro's biggest hit together and earned another Oscar nod for the star. De Niro subsequently co-starred as a geeky cop in the Scorsese-produced Mad Dog and Glory (1993) and reunited with Cape Fear's Jessica Lange for the noir remake Night and the City (1992).
De Niro also revealed that he had learned a great deal from his work with Scorsese with his own directorial debut, A Bronx Tale (1993). A well-observed story of a boy torn between his father and the local Mob, A Bronx Tale earned praise, but De Niro opted to stick with acting and producing afterwards. De Niro made his third Scorsese film of the decade when he starred as Vegas kingpin Sam Rothstein in Casino (1995). Though it was staged with Scorsese's customary visual brilliance and paired De Niro with his Raging Bull brother and Goodfellas associate Joe Pesci, Casino received mixed notices and failed to score financially. De Niro passed on another opportunity to collaborate with Scorsese, as well as another co-starring turn with his This Boy's Life (1993) and Marvin's Room (1996) colleague Leonardo Di Caprio, when he dropped out of Gangs of New York (2002).
Appearing in as many as three films a year after 1990, including his Scorsese work, De Niro's output garnered as many bad notices as good, but every time he appeared to take a wrong turn, he quickly managed to recover. Any doubts raised by the failed romance Stanley and Iris (1990) and the Hollywood schlock Backdraft (1991) were allayed by Goodfellas and Cape Fear; De Niro's too-psychotic abusive stepfather in This Boy's Life and bizarre eponymous monster in the flop Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) were offset by his polished reserve in Michael Mann's glossy policer Heat (1995). Starring De Niro as a cool bank robber opposite Al Pacino's fervid cop, Heat offered the rare spectacle of De Niro and Pacino sharing the screen, if only in two scenes. After indifferently received turns in The Fan (1996), Sleepers (1996), and Cop Land (1997), De Niro stepped outside his usual gallery of cops and criminals to play a puckish, amoral political strategist in Barry Levinson's sharp satire Wag the Dog (1997). Though co-stars Pam Grier and Robert Forster received more attention, De Niro also rose to the acting occasion as a dangerously dimwitted crook in Quentin Tarantino's laid-back crime story Jackie Brown (1997). John Frankenheimer's smooth Euro-style espionage thriller Ronin (1998) allowed De Niro to headline a topnotch international cast; he took a back seat, however, to the young lovers and the lush green production design in Alfonso Cuarón's contemporary adaptation of Great Expectations (1998).
De Niro was front and center once again in the comedy Analyze This (1999). As teary, stressed-out Mafia boss Paul Vitti, De Niro acknowledged and goofed on his esteemed collection of screen mobsters, aided and abetted by a nicely low-key Billy Crystal as his reluctant psychiatrist; the pair's humorous chemistry turned Analyze This into a major hit. De Niro's more serious, "actorly" turns as a homophobic stroke victim in Flawless (1999) and a prejudiced Navy officer in Men of Honor (2000) were further eclipsed by De Niro the new comic star with Meet the Parents (2000). Playing off of De Niro's renowned history of screen menace, Meet the Parents pitted the absurdly stern De Niro as the potential father-in-law from hell against Ben Stiller's increasingly hapless male nurse Greg Focker, and became a blockbuster success. Not surprisingly, both films spawned sequels, Analyze That (2002) and Meet the Fockers (2004). De Niro's comic outing opposite Eddie Murphy in Showtime (2002), however, bombed.
Along with the comedies, De Niro still continued to take on his customary dramatic roles. His potentially interesting opportunity to co-star with his Godfather model and youthful inspiration Marlon Brando and his gifted young counterpart Edward Norton in the crime drama The Score (2001), however, was undermined by the ordinariness of the heist plot. Covering familiar territory, De Niro played troubled N.Y. cops in 15 Minutes (2001) and City by the Sea (2002). His daughter, Drena De Niro, from his first marriage to Diahnne Abbott, also appeared in City by the Sea (his second marriage ended in 2002).
As a New Yorker and downtown resident, De Niro took time from his packed movie schedule to contribute to the commemoration of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the revitalization of downtown Manhattan. Working closely with Scorsese, De Niro co-organized the first Tribeca Film Festival in May 2002. Reaching the national audience, De Niro also made a rare TV appearance, in footage shot in his Tribeca neighborhood a few blocks from the Trade Center site, to narrate the award-winning CBS documentary 9/11 (2002).
As the decade wore on, De Niro continued to take on roles that failed to live up to his acclaimed earlier work. 2004 saw him staying in the comedy vein, parodying himself as the voice of a shark mobster in the animated Shark Tale and starring in the aforementioned Meet the Fockers. Meanwhile, he also served up a pair of critically-maligned thrillers with Godsend and Hide and Seek. All the while, De Niro continued to work on his ambitious and long-planned next foray behind the camera, the CIA drama The Good Shepherd. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Robert De Niro was born in New York City, New York, the son of Virginia Admiral, a painter, and Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor.[1] 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, immigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of Campobasso, Molise,[2] and his paternal grandmother, Helen O' Reilly, was the granddaughter of Edward O'Reilly, an immigrant from Ireland.[3]
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. He was raised in New York's Greenwich Village by his mother. 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 Fiorello 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 dancers of all time.
Early film career
De Niro's first film role in collaboration with Brian De Palma was 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).
De Niro on the set of Raging Bull with Jake LaMotta
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.
In many of his films, De Niro has played likable or sympathetic 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 largely improvised.[4] In 1976, De Niro appeared (along with Gérard Depardieu and Donald Sutherland) in Bernardo Bertolucci's epic biographical exploration of life in Italy before World War II, Novecento (1900), seen through the eyes of two Italian childhood friends at the opposite sides of society's hierarchy.
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. According to People magazine, the technique was successful. Lewis recalled, "I forgot the cameras were there... I was going for Bobby's throat."[5]
In 1995, De Niro starred in Michael Mann's police action-thriller Heat, along with fellow actor and long-time friend, Al Pacino. The duo drew much attention from fans, as both have generally been compared throughout their careers. Though both Pacino and De Niro starred in The Godfather, Part II, they shared no screen time. De Niro and Pacino once again appeared in a film together, in the crime thriller Righteous Kill.[6]
In 2004, De Niro provided the voice of Don Lino, the antagonist in the animated film Shark Tale, opposite Will Smith. He also reprised his role as Jack Byrnes in Meet the Fockers, and was featured in Stardust. All films were successful at the box office but received mixed reviews. When promoting Shark Tale, De Niro said that was his first experience with voice acting, which he commented was an enjoyable time.
De Niro had to turn down a role in The Departed (Martin Sheen taking the role instead) due to commitments with preparing The Good Shepherd. He said "I wanted to. I wish I could've been able to, but I was preparing The Good Shepherd so much that I couldn't take the time to. I was trying to figure a way to do it while I was preparing. It just didn't seem possible."[7]
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. On April 27, 2009, it was announced that the De Niro collection at the Ransom Center was open to researchers and the public. De Niro has said that he is working with Martin Scorsese on a new project. "I'm trying to actually work... [screenwriter] Eric Roth and myself and Marty are working on a script now, trying to get it done."[7]
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 (though he declined the award) 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 film,[8] 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.
De Niro is acting in the role of a mobster in Paramount Pictures' upcoming movie, Frankie Machine. He announced that he would appear in Martin Campbell's film version of the classic BBC crime series Edge of Darkness in 2010 alongside Mel Gibson, but, just after he arrived to begin shooting, De Niro walked from the set due to creative differences.[9] He was then replaced by Ray Winstone.[10]
Film director
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.
Recent projects
CBS has made a deal with Tribeca Productions 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.
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,[12] The Greenwich Hotel,[13] located in Tribeca, and the restaurant inside the hotel, Locanda Verde, formally known as Ago, which is run by executive chef and co-owner, Andrew Carmellini.[14]
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[15] 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 in 1995), from a long-term live-in relationship with former model Toukie Smith.[citation needed] All of De Niro's partners have been African Americans.
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."[16] 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.
De Niro was due to be granted with 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 registered in the electoral district of Molise, the Italian homeland of his great-grandparents.
