Robert De Niro American Actor Born 1943 in New York City

Early life

Robert Anthony De Niro was born on 17 August 1943 in Manhattan, New York City. He was the only child of the painters Virginia Admiral and Robert De Niro Sr., who had met at a painting class in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His parents separated when he was two, and he grew up with his mother in Greenwich Village and Little Italy, while his father lived nearby and stayed in his life.

He went to P.S. 41, took his first acting classes as a child and made his stage debut at ten as the Cowardly Lion in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. He later attended Elisabeth Irwin High School and Rhodes Preparatory School, and left school at sixteen to pursue acting. He trained at HB Studio, with Stella Adler, and at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg.

Career

De Niro appeared in small film parts in the mid-1960s, among them Three Rooms in Manhattan (1965), and had a larger role in Brian De Palma's comedy Greetings (1968). He worked with De Palma again on Hi, Mom! (1970) and took the lead in the baseball drama Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). That same year he began working with Martin Scorsese on Mean Streets, as the volatile small-time criminal Johnny Boy.

In The Godfather Part II (1974) he played the young Vito Corleone, speaking mostly in Sicilian dialects. Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) followed, with De Niro as the troubled cab driver Travis Bickle. Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978), in which he played a steelworker sent to Vietnam, and Raging Bull (1980) came next. For the last he gained about 60 pounds to play the boxer Jake LaMotta.

During the 1980s he took on a wider range of material, including The King of Comedy (1982), Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Brazil (1985), The Mission (1986), and Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987). The comedy Midnight Run (1988) showed a lighter side. Goodfellas (1990) and Cape Fear (1991), in which he played the vengeful Max Cady, both paired him with Scorsese, and he was nominated for an Oscar for Awakenings and for Cape Fear.

He directed and acted in A Bronx Tale (1993), then returned to Scorsese for Casino (1995), as the casino operator Sam "Ace" Rothstein. In Heat (1995) he shared the screen with Al Pacino for the first time, since the two had not appeared together in The Godfather Part II. Later credits include Wag the Dog (1997), Analyze This (1999) and the Meet the Parents films that began in 2000, in which he played Jack Byrnes. In 2006 he directed and appeared in The Good Shepherd, a drama about the early years of the CIA.

He received another supporting actor nomination for Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and later appeared in The Intern (2015) and the HBO film The Wizard of Lies (2017), in which he portrayed Bernie Madoff. In 2019 he played the talk show host Murray Franklin in Joker and Frank Sheeran in Scorsese's The Irishman. His eighth Oscar nomination came for Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), where he played the rancher William Hale. His latest credit is The Whisper Man (2026).

With Jane Rosenthal, De Niro founded the production company TriBeCa Productions in 1989 and the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002.

Public roles

De Niro served as president of the jury at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1987 and presided over the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, his second term in that role.

Recognition

De Niro won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather Part II and the Academy Award for Best Actor for Raging Bull, the latter alongside the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama. He was also nominated for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings and Cape Fear in the lead category, and for Silver Linings Playbook and Killers of the Flower Moon in the supporting one.

Among his honours are the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at Venice in 1993, the Donostia Award in 2000, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2003, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2019. France made him a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1997, and Italy has also decorated him with the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. In 2025 he was given an honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes.

Personal life

De Niro married Diahnne Abbott in 1976, and they divorced in 1988; he adopted her daughter, the actress Drena De Niro. He married Grace Hightower in 1997. He lives in New York.