Robert de Niro – Two-time Academy Award-winning film actor

Robert de Niro

Robert Anthony De Niro Jr.
(17 August 1943, New York)
Nationality: United States of America, Italy
Category: Celebrities
Occupation:  Actors, Film Directors
Unique distinction: Iconic Italian-American film actor, two-time Academy Award-winning
Height:  5’9” (175cm)
Gender: Male

Quotes:
1. I am part Italian, I’m not all Italian. I’m part Dutch, I’m part French, I’m part German, I’m part Irish. But my name is Italian and I probably identify more with my Italian side than with my other parts.
2. There is a certain combination of anarchy and discipline in the way I work.
3. You learned the two greatest thing in life, never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.
4. There’s nothing more ironic or contradictory than life itself.
5. The talent is in the choices.
6. I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they’re running the asylum.”
7. I don’t like to watch my own movies – I fall asleep in my own movies.”

Achievements and contributions:


Social and professional position: Italian-American actor and producer.
The main contribution to : Robert de Niro is one of the greatest actors of all time. He won two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor (1974) for The Godfather Part II, for Best Actor (1981) for Raging Bull. Two Golden Globe Awards: Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, Raging Bull (1981), Cecil B. DeMille Award (2011). He was the Founder of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Contributions: 

Robert de Niro is an Italian-American actor and producer, who has made nearly 100 movies since 1990.
Honours and Awards:
Two Academy Awards and Two Golden Globe Awards.
Academy Awards, USA. Wins -2 and nominations -6.
He won two Academy Awards: for Best Supporting Actor (1974) for The Godfather Part II and for Best Actor (1981) for Raging Bull.
5 Nominations on Academy Awards: Best Actor, Taxi Driver (1976); The Deer Hunter (1978); Awakenings (1990); Cape Fear (1991), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), The Irishman (2019).
Golden Globe Awards. Wins -2, nominations -9.
He won two Golden Globe Awards: Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, Raging Bull (1981), Cecil B. DeMille Award (2011).
9 Nominations for Golden Globe Award for Best Actor: Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), The Deer Hunter ( 1978), Midnight Run (1988), Cape Fear (1991), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000), The Wizard of Lies (2018), The Irishman (2019).
BAFTA Awards. Nominations -7.
7 Nominations for Golden Globe Award for Best Actor:  The Godfather: Part II (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982), Goodfellas (1990), The Irishman (2019).
Berlin International Film Festival. Win -1. Nomination -1.
Silver Berlin Bear (2007) for  Outstanding Artistic Contribution. Film The Good Shepherd (2006).
He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2003.
Filmography:
Bang the Drum Slowly; Mean Streets (1973); The Godfather Part II (1974); Taxi Driver (1976);  New York, New York (1977); The Deer Hunter (1979); Raging Bull (1980); The King of Comedy (1984); Once Upon a Time in America (1984); The Untouchables (1987); Goodfellas (1990, with Joe Pesci);  Awakenings (1990); Cape Fear (1991); Casino (1995, with Sharon Stone); Heat (1995); Wag the Dog (1997, with Dustin Hoffman); Cop Land, Jackie Brown (1997); Analyze This (1999); Meet the Parents, Men of Honor (2000); The Score (2001); Showtime; City by the Sea; Analyze That (2002); Godsend; Meet the Fockers (2004); Hide and Seek (2005); The Good Shepherd (2006); Stardust (2007); Everybody’s Fine (2008); Machete (2009); Little Fockers (2010); Red Lights; New Year’s Eve; Killer Elite; Limitless (2011); Being Flynn, Red Lights, Freelancers, Silver Linings Playbook (2012), The Big Wedding, Killing Season, The Family, Last Vegas, American Hustle, Grudge Match ( 2013), The Bag Man (2014), Bus 657, The Intern, Joy (2015), Hands of Stone, Dirty Grandpa, The Comedian (2016), The Wizard of Lies (2017), The War with Grandpa (2018), The Irishman (2019).
Producing more than 30 films, including Rent (2005); The Good, Shepherd (2006), What Just Happened (2008), Public Enemies (2009), Little Fockers, 20% Fiction, 36, (2010), Warrior Queen The Undomestic Goddess (2011) Directed: A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006, starred Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie), The Irishman (2019).
He has directed and starred in films such as the crime drama A Bronx Tale (1993), and the spy film The Good Shepherd (2006).
De Niro is the Founder of the Tribeca Film Festival, co-founding the film studio TriBeCa Productions, and owner of the restaurant Nobu. As a long resider of New York City, he invested in Manhattan’s  Tribeca neighbourhood.

Career and personal life:


Origin: Robert De Niro was born on 17 August 1943 in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, New York. His Italian great-grandparents, Giovanni De Niro and Angelina Mercurio emigrated from Ferrazzano, Molise.
His father Robert De Niro, Sr., was an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor and his mother – Virginia Admiral, was a painter and poet. His father was of half-Italian and half-Irish descent, while his mother was of Dutch, English, French, German, and Irish ancestry.
Education: De Niro attended a public elementary school in Manhattan and later an Elisabeth Irwin High School, the private upper school of the Little Red School House.
De Niro shortly attended the High School of Music and Art and later the private McBurney School and the private Rhodes Preparatory School, although he never graduated from either. He studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory, as well as Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.

Career highlights:

 At the age of 10, De Niro made his stage debut as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. He also took children’s acting classes in Maria Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop.
De Niro’s first film role came at the age of 20 in the film The Wedding Party (1963), but the film was not released until 1969. His First Major Screen credits were Greetings (1968) and Bloody Mama (1970).
He began gaining popularity at the beginning of the 1970s after appearing in the sports drama Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) and Scorsese’s crime film Mean Streets (1973). Later he earned Academy Award nominations for the two films directed by Martin Scorsese: Taxi Driver (1976) and Cape Fear (1991).
De Niro and Scorsese have successfully collaborated throughout their careers. De Niro starred in such Scorsese’s mostly crime genre films as  New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995).  Guilty by Suspicion (1991).
In 1974 he starred in the film The Godfather Part II, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1976 de Niro appeared in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 with Gérard Depardieu, Stefania Sandrelli and Donald Sutherland and in a drama film directed by Elia Kazan The Last Tycoon, with  Jack Nicholson and Tony Curtis.
In 1978 De Niro starred in the film The Deer Hunter, for which he was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
In 1980 De Niro scored his second Academy Award  Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake La Motta in the film Raging Bull.
Confirming his acting versatility he earned the recognition of the audience for his comedic roles in such films as Brazil (1985), Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999), Meets the Parents (2000), and Meet the Fockers (2004), Little Fockers (2010).
Other films of 80’s include True Confessions (1981), the romantic-drama film Falling in Love (1984), with Meryl Streep, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), The Mission (1986), Angel Heart (1987), The Untouchables (1987) with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery.
In 90’s he successfully starred in the films Goodfellas (1990), Awakenings (1990), Heat (1995), The Fan (1996), Sleepers (1996), Wag the Dog (1997), Jackie Brown (1997), Ronin (1998) and  Flawless (1999).
Later De Niro starred in the biographical film Men of Honor (2000),  in the comedy films Meet the Parents (2000) with Ben Stiller,  Meet the Fockers (2004) with Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand. He reprised his roles in the films: The Departed (2006) with Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson, The Good Shepherd (2006) with Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Alex Baldwin,  in the romantic fantasy film Stardust (2007) with Michelle Pfeiffer.
In 2010 he reprised his roles in the action film Machete and in the thriller Stone with Edward Norton and Milla Jovovich and in the comedy film Little Fockers with Jessica Alba, Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand.
In 2011 he appeared in the action film Killer Elite, Limitless  and the romantic comedy film New Year’s Eve  and in the film Manuale d’amore 3
In 2012, he starred with  Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence in the films Silver Linings Playbook, garnering the 7th Oscar nomination of his career, and also in Freelancers, Red Lights, and Being Flynn with Julianne Moore.
In 2013  he starred in Grudge Match, Last Vegas and The Bag Man.
In 2015, he appeared in the comedy The Intern alongside Anne Hathaway. This year he starred in the biographical drama Joy, opposite Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. Also in 2015, he appeared in two short films, Scorsese’s The Audition and JR’s Ellis.
In 2016, he co-starred in Dirty Grandpa and appeared in Hands of Stone.
In 2017, De Niro starred in The Wizard of Lies (Primetime Emmy Award nomination) and in 2019  in the psychological thriller Joker and Scorsese’s crime epic The Irishman. On September 25, 2020, De Niro appeared in the comedy  Father of the Bride Part 3

Personal life:  

De Niro married his first wife, an African-American actress and singer Diahnne Abbott, in 1976 and the couple split in 1988. They have a son, Raphael and De Niro also adopted Abbott’s daughter from a previous relationship. Later De Niro has a long relationship with former African-American fashion model Toukie Smith.
They have twin sons together conceived by in vitro fertilization and delivered by a surrogate mother in 1995. In 1997, De Niro married his second wife, actress Grace Hightower. Their son Elliot was born in 1998. They divorced in 1999.
In 2004 they renewed their vows and in December 2011, a daughter named Helen Grace was born via surrogate. In 2018 it was reported De Niro and Hightower had separated after 20 years of marriage.
De Niro has six children and four grandchildren, one from his daughter Drena and three from his son Raphael.
Zest: Robert was an only child in the family. He is the second actor to win an Oscar for portraying Vito Corleone. He and Marlon Brando are the only two actors to win an Oscar for playing the same character.
De Niro said that Meryl Streep is his favourite actress to work with. Very good friends with fellow actor and frequent co-star, Joe Pesci.