Robert DeNiro Bio

Robert DeNiro Biography

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Robert Mario De Niro, Jr. (born August 17, 1943) is a two-time Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning American film actor, director, and producer. Often regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was also called one of the most enigmatic actors of his time.

He is noted for his method acting and portrayal of conflicted, troubled characters and for his enduring collaboration with director Martin Scorsese. He is best known for his roles as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, cabbie Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull, mobster Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas, Al Capone in The Untouchables and Michael Vronsky in The Deer Hunter.

Robert DeNiro: Biography

Robert DeNiro - Early life

De Niro was born in New York, the son of Virginia Admiral, a painter, and Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor. De Niro's father was a lapsed Catholic of Italian and Irish descent and his mother a Presbyterian-raised atheist of German, Dutch and French descent. His Italian great-grandparents had emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of Campobasso, Molise. His 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. His childhood nickname was "Bobby Milk" due to his pale complexion in his youth.

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. 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. At the age of 16 he toured in a production of Chekhov's The Bear.

Robert DeNiro - Early film career

At the age of 20, in 1963, came De Niro's first film role and collaboration with Brian De Palma, when he appeared in The Wedding Party; it was not released until 1969, however. 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) and 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 his memorable role as the smalltime Mafia 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. His performance earned him his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He became the first actor to ever win an Academy Award speaking only a foreign language, Sicilian.

After working with him in Mean Streets he had a very successful working relationship with Scorsese 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 these films, De Niro has primarily 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 himself.

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 for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He was offered the role of "Cowboy" in director Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979) but turned it down.

Robert DeNiro - Later film career

Praised for his commitment to roles (stemming from his background in Method acting), De Niro gained 60 pounds (27 kg) and learned how to box for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, ground his teeth for Cape Fear, lived in Sicily for The Godfather Part II, worked as a cab driver for three months for Taxi Driver, and learned to play the saxophone for New York, New York. He also put on weight and shaved his hairline to play Al Capone in The Untouchables.

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. An example of De Niro's Method acting was during the filming of The King of Comedy, in which De Niro directed a slew of anti-Semitic epithets at co-star 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."

Although unmistakably better known for his roles in Scorsese's films, he starred in Sergio Leone's last film: a four-hour long epic period gangster movie titled Once Upon a Time in America. Leone had spent almost ten years of his life trying to obtain the rights to get the film, which was heavily edited for US theaters and was underplayed both with critics and audiences alike.

Fearing he had become typecast in mob roles, De Niro from the mid-1980s began expanding into occasional comedic roles, 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), the melodrama Awakenings (1990) with Robin Williams where DeNiro plays a catatonic patient brought to life by medication; Showtime (2002) opposite Eddie Murphy; and the film-and-sequel pairs Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That (2002), and Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004).

Other films include Falling in Love (1984), The Mission (1986), Angel Heart (1987) Heat (1995), Wag the Dog (1997) and Ronin (1998). In 1997, he reteamed with Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta, along with Sylvester Stallone, in the crime drama Cop Land. De Niro played a supporting role, taking a back seat to Stallone, Keitel and Liotta.

De Niro in 1988

In 1993 he also starred in This Boy's Life, featuring then-rising child actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire.

In 1995 De Niro starred in Michael Mann's Heat, along with fellow actor 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. In May 2007, Variety.com reported that De Niro and Pacino will once again appear in a film together as police investigators hunting a serial killer in the crime thriller Righteous Kill.

In 2004, De Niro provided the voice of Don Lino, the antagonist in the animated film Shark Tale, opposite Will Smith. This was De Niro's first experience with voice acting. When interviewed about his role in Shark Tale, De Niro said that participating in an animated cartoon was one of the funniest aspects of his Hollywood career. He also reprised his role as Jack Byrnes in Meet the Fockers. Both films were very successful at the box office, but received mixed reviews.

De Niro had to turn down a role in The Departed (Martin Sheen taking the role instead) due to commitments 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."

In De Niro's next project, he directed and co-starred in The Good Shepherd (2006), also starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The movie also reunited him onscreen with Joe Pesci, with whom De Niro had starred in Raging Bull, Once Upon A Time in America, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale and Casino.

On June 7, 2006, it was announced that De Niro 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 (screenwriter) 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 (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 first and 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's performance is one of only five people to win an Academy Award for working in a foreign language, as he primarily spoke Italian, with very few phrases in English.

Robert De Niro as Green Beret SSG Michael Vronsky

De Niro is acting in the role of a mobster in Paramount Pictures's upcoming movie Frankie Machine.

Robert De Niro

Robert DeNiro - Directorial efforts

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

De Niro did not direct 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 Sullivan, who recruits Damon's character into the world of counter-intelligence.

Robert DeNiro - Personal life

De Niro has a son, Raphael, with first wife Diahnne Abbott. He also adopted Abbott's daughter, Drena, from a previous relationship. He also has twin sons, Julian Henry and Aaron Kendrick, (conceived by in vitro fertilization) 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 in 2007.

Since 1989, De Niro has been investing in the TriBeCa neighborhood in lower Manhattan. His capital ventures have included co-founding the film studio TriBeCa Productions, the popular TriBeCa Film Festival, and finally 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.

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 and the couple filed for divorce shortly after his birth, although the action was never officially finalized.

In February 1998, during a film shoot in France, he was taken in for questioning for nine hours by French police and 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, Robert De Niro, with film director Woody Allen, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis and writer George Plimpton joined a pro-French tourism campaign as a direct response to anti-French sentiment in the US related to the 2003 Iraq invasion.

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, and 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 Rome Film Festival finale.

De Niro is a staunch 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 Naudet and Gedeon Naudet, which focused on the role of firefighters following the attacks. De Niro was reportedly a supporter of the invasion of Iraq but his comments on February 4 corrected that speculation when he made a speech including the endorsement: "He (Obama) wasn't experienced enough to vote to authorise the invasion of Iraq... That's the kind of inexperience I could get used to". 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 who 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.

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