Robert De Niro

Info

Full Name: Robert Anthony De Niro
Date of birth: August 17, 1943 (83 years old)
Location: New York, New York
Country: USA

Robert De Niro has been active for 53 years, participating in 89 movies that average a 6.6/10 score.

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Tráiler oficial de 'Masters del Universo', con Nicholas Galitzine como He-Man

Biography

On the streets of Greenwich Village they called him "Bobby Milk", the pale, shy kid who seemed made of milk. Six decades later, that teenager who dropped out of school at 16 is, for many critics and for most polls of his own peers, quite simply the greatest actor in the history of cinema. Robert De Niro was born in Manhattan on 17 August 1943, the son of two abstract expressionist painters: Virginia Admiral and Robert De Niro Sr., who separated when he was two, after his father came out as gay. Decades later, the actor would dedicate a moving documentary to him. He grew up between the Village and Little Italy, the very streets he would later immortalise with his favourite director behind the camera.

The young Vito Corleone

He trained with the legendary Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, the two rival schools of the Method, a double pedigree few actors can claim, and cut his teeth in New York independent cinema until 1973 changed everything: the baseball drama 'Bang the Drum Slowly' and, above all, 'Mean Streets', his first collaboration with Martin Scorsese, the director with whom he would form modern cinema's most fertile partnership: ten films across five decades.

A year later, Francis Ford Coppola handed him the most intimidating challenge imaginable: to rejuvenate Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone in 'The Godfather: Part II' (1974). He spent months in Sicily soaking up the dialect, performed almost the entire runtime in Sicilian and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor: Vito Corleone remains the only character to have won the statuette for two different performers.

Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter and the legend of the Method

His commitment became legendary. For 'Taxi Driver' (1976) he obtained a real cab licence and drove night shifts around New York; the film won the Palme d'Or and his Travis Bickle, with that improvised "You talkin' to me?", now belongs to popular culture. After the Italian epic 'Novecento' and the musical 'New York, New York' (1977), he plunged into the Russian roulette of Michael Cimino's Vietnam epic 'The Deer Hunter' (1978), alongside Christopher Walken, earning another Oscar nomination.

The summit came with 'Raging Bull' (1980): to play boxer Jake LaMotta he first trained into championship shape, coached by LaMotta himself, who swore he could have fought professionally, and then gained sixty pounds for the decline, an unprecedented transformation that won him his second Oscar, this time as lead. Then came the squirm-inducing satire of 'The King of Comedy' (1982), now hailed as a forerunner of Joker, Sergio Leone's criminal fresco 'Once Upon a Time in America' (1984), butchered in its American cut and later vindicated as a masterpiece, his cameo in Terry Gilliam's dystopian 'Brazil' (1985), the repentant slaver of 'The Mission' (1986), with Jeremy Irons, and his baseball bat wielding Al Capone in Brian De Palma's 'The Untouchables' (1987). In action comedy mode, 'Midnight Run' (1988) became a cult favourite.

Goodfellas, Heat and a debut behind the camera

The nineties found him at full power. After the prison comedy 'We're No Angels' (1989), he returned to Scorsese for his elegant Jimmy Conway in 'Goodfellas' (1990), was nominated for the catatonic patient of 'Awakenings' (1990), opposite Robin Williams, and again for the tattooed psychopath of 'Cape Fear' (1991). In 'This Boy's Life' (1993) he terrorised a debuting Leonardo DiCaprio, and that same year he made his directorial debut with the splendid 'A Bronx Tale', adapted from a stage monologue he also produced. There was room too for the courtroom drama 'Sleepers' (1996) and a modernised 'Great Expectations' (1998).

He even gave his body to the creature of Kenneth Branagh's 'Mary Shelley's Frankenstein' (1994) before ruling crime again: the casino financier of 'Casino' (1995), with Sharon Stone, and the methodical thief of Michael Mann's 'Heat' (1995), where he finally shared the frame with Al Pacino, twenty years after sharing billing without crossing paths in The Godfather Part II: that diner conversation is one of modern cinema's sacred moments.

He closed the decade with the internal affairs cop of 'Cop Land' (1997) opposite Sylvester Stallone, the weary trafficker of Quentin Tarantino's 'Jackie Brown' (1997), the political satire of 'Wag the Dog' (1997), his first with Barry Levinson, and the family drama of 'Marvin's Room' (1996), with Meryl Streep.

The godfather of comedy (and of Tribeca)

With the new century he proved he could laugh at his own legend. The mobster in therapy of 'Analyze This' (1999), with Billy Crystal, and above all the merciless father in law of 'Meet the Parents' (2000), torturing Ben Stiller with his lie detector, made him the father of modern American comedy; the Focker saga has grossed more than a billion dollars combined. The saga continued with 'Meet the Fockers' (2004), alongside Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, and 'Little Fockers' (2010). He went back into therapy with 'Analyze That' (2002) and even voiced the mobster shark of 'Shark Tale' (2004), curiously the same animated film in which Scorsese dubbed a pufferfish.

Meanwhile, after the September 11 attacks he co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival to revive lower Manhattan, now an annual fixture that draws half of Hollywood, built a restaurant empire with the Nobu chain and the Greenwich Hotel, and directed his second film, the spy drama 'The Good Shepherd' (2006), with Matt Damon. There was time for everything: the thriller 'Limitless' (2011), the sky pirate with a secret of the fantasy 'Stardust' (2007), the mayhem of 'Machete' (2010) and the mischief of 'Dirty Grandpa' (2016).

The David O. Russell years returned him to critics' favour: the superstitious father of 'Silver Linings Playbook' (2012), with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, brought another nomination, and he reunited with them on 'American Hustle' (2013) and 'Joy' (2015). He also played the fraudster Bernie Madoff in 'The Wizard of Lies' opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, the endearing boss of the word of mouth hit 'The Intern' (2015), with Anne Hathaway, and the talk show host Murray Franklin who unhinges Joaquin Phoenix's 'Joker' (2019), the perfect nod to his own King of Comedy.

The Irishman, a president and the new Fockers

At an age when others retire, he strung together two monuments with Scorsese: the twilight hitman Frank Sheeran of 'The Irishman' (2019), digitally de-aged across half a century of story and reunited with Pacino and Joe Pesci, and the sinister rancher of 'Killers of the Flower Moon' (2023), the first time Scorsese's two favourite actors coincided under his direction, which at 80 gifted him his eighth Oscar nomination. Recent years also held the comedy 'About My Father' (2023), the drama 'Ezra' (2023) and the ensemble piece 'Amsterdam' (2022).

Far from slowing, in February 2025, after six decades of cinema, he debuted as the lead of a television series: the beloved, haunted former president investigating a massive cyberattack in 'Zero Day', Netflix's conspiracy thriller with Angela Bassett, and split himself into the mobsters Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, both roles at once, in 'The Alto Knights' (2025), by Barry Levinson, scripted by Nicholas Pileggi, the very writer of Goodfellas. In May 2025, Cannes handed him the honorary Palme d'Or, presented by DiCaprio himself, joining the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, the SAG Life Achievement Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A fierce and very public critic of Donald Trump, he has never hidden his politics, even taking the stage at Democratic campaign events in 2024. And on 25 November 2026 cinema's most feared father in law returns with 'Focker In-Law', once again with Ben Stiller and with the signing of Ariana Grande.

Seven children and a life among kitchens

His private life has been as prolific as his filmography: he has seven children. With the actress Diahnne Abbott, his wife from 1976 to 1988, he had Raphael and adopted Drena; with the model Toukie Smith came the twins Julian and Aaron (1995), and with Grace Hightower, his wife from 1997 to 2018, Elliot and Helen Grace. A grandfather several times over, in 2023 he became a father again at 79, to widespread astonishment and delight: little Gia Virginia, from his relationship with Tiffany Chen, the martial arts instructor he met while shooting The Intern. That same year he absorbed his hardest blow, the death of his grandson Leandro at just 19.

Between shoots, restaurants and baby bottles, with more than a hundred films behind him and 82 years on the clock, the man who was once Bobby Milk keeps working as if he were starting out. Perhaps because, as he has said when collecting his honorary awards, acting is the only thing he has ever really known how to do. And if the last five decades are any guide, there is at least one more transformation still to come. Nobody in history has done it better.