Robert De Niro, Jr., was
born in August 17, 1943, New York to a family of artists. His mother,Virginia
Admiral, was a painter, and father Robert was a
painter,sculptor, and poet. De Niro's childhood was unique in its
freedom,perhaps less so in its loneliness.
He was known around his Little Italy
neighborhood in New York as"Bobby
Milk" because of his
scrawniness and wimp-like traits. He was a shy child
who preferred paper backs to playmates.He was able to overcome his
timidity at age ten for his first stage role as the cowardly lion
in The Wizard of Oz.
De Niro spent most of his early teen years on the
streets, where he whiled
away his time with a small-time gang. Acting called him
back, and his first paycheck came at sixteen with a touring
performance in Chekhov's The Bear.From there,
De Niro embarked on a fifteen-year tour through
dinner theatres and off-Broadway stages.
Like most successful actors of the era, he studied with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, the
chief proponents of Method acting. De
Niro's first screen effort, The Wedding Party, is notable
only because of his participation and that of director Brian
De Palma.Shot in 1963, it was not
released until 1969, and it went unnoticed.His
next two films were also with De Palma: Greetings
and Hi, Mom! were satires looking
at sex, the draft ,and the counterculture. But it
wasn't until 1973 that De Niro really began turning
heads in Hollywood.
His portrayal of dying baseball
player Bruce Pearson in Bang the Drum Slowly won him
the New York Film Critics award for Best Actor.The same
year,De Niro appeared in Martin Scorsese's Mean
Streets, beginning a longtime collaboration
that has spawned atotal of eight films,including Taxi
Driver, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas .
In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola'sThe Godfather,
Part II turned De Niro into a superstar. His role as the young Vito Corleone
won him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar--his portrayal
of the young Godfather cemented his reputation as the next Marlon Brando.
He demonstrated his dedication to his craft by gaining sixty
pounds to play aging boxer Jake La Motta in Raging Bull,
for which he won the Best Actor Oscar.
De Niro has fiercely protected
his private life. At the beginning of his career,he gave interviews--then
he abruptly decided that his personal life had absolutely nothing
to do with his film career.
He married sometime actress Diahnne Abbott (The
King Of Comedy)in 1976 and had a son, Raphael. They separated
after several years . The most recent involves child support over twins he had with former girlfriend Toukie
Smith. Smith claims De Niro was merely a sperm donor. De
Niro has four other children: two-year-old twin sons, Aaron and Julian,
whom he had via a surrogate mother with ex-girlfriend Toukie Smith; and
twenty-one-year-old son, Raphael, and thirty-year-old daughter, Dreena,
with his ex-wife, actress Diahnne Abbott. De Niro and Hightower were wed
in June 17 1997 after a year-long engagement. And now De Niro's wife, forty-two-year-old
former flight attendant Grace Hightower, gave birth to a baby boy . No
word yet on the little bundle of boy's weight or name.
Sound Area
Biography
Filmography
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