Hollywood legend
From “Taxi Driver” to “The Irishman”: Robert De Niro turns 80
Robert De Niro turns 80. Photo
© Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/dpa
He became world famous as a screen mafioso, and as a comedy star he made money. At 80, Robert De Niro continues tirelessly. Also as a new father – his seventh child was born in April.
Until the strike began in mid-July, De Niro was still in front of the camera for the Netflix series “Zero Day”, said his spokesman Stan Rosenfield at the request of the German Press Agency. But then the shooting stopped. Only after the end of the labor dispute will it continue.
Because of the strike, he was unfortunately not allowed to give any interviews or speak about his work, Rosenfield confirmed. And another rejection: He did not publicly announce De Niro’s plans for his 80th birthday.
father of seven children
But that certainly doesn’t make the life of the busy Hollywood senior any less turbulent. In recent months, De Niro has made headlines more often – and not just with his work. At the beginning of May, the actor came out as a new father.
In an interview with an ET Canada TV reporter about his new film And Then Came Dad, he announced his fatherhood. When asked about his six children, the actor corrected the reporter that there were now seven. The girl, born in April, is called Gia Virginia Chen-De Niro, he revealed a little later. It is the first child with his current partner Tiffany Chen.
He has De Niro’s eldest children, Drena, 51, and Raphael, 46, with ex-wife Diahnne Abbott. Twin sons Julian and Aaron, 27, are from his then-girlfriend Toukie Smith, son Elliot, 25, and daughter Helen, 11, he has with ex-wife Grace Hightower. After more than 20 years of marriage, the couple separated in 2018.
De Niro then strolled down the red carpet in Cannes in mid-May with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. The three stars presented their new film “Killers of the Flower Moon” at the film festival. The historical crime thriller tells the story of the indigenous people of the Osage, who fell victim to a series of murders in Oklahoma in the 1920s after oil was found on their land. DiCaprio plays a man who is married to an Osage woman but is framed for crimes by his ruthless uncle (De Niro).
Killers of the Flower Moon is the tenth feature film by Scorsese and De Niro. Their first collaboration 50 years ago, the milieu study “Hexenkessel” (1973) about the hard life on the streets of New York, was praised by critics. With “Taxi Driver” (1976) followed the ingenious portrait of a bitter Vietnam fighter. De Niro played the taxi driver and loner Travis Bickle, who grows more and more into anger, hatred and violence out of disgust for the New York demimonde.
Meticulous preparation
For Scorsese’s boxer portrait Raging Bull (1980), De Niro trained in the boxing ring and gained over 50 pounds. With this role he won his first and so far only leading actor Oscar. In 1975 he received an Oscar for best supporting actor for his performance as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Godfather II. De Niro spent months learning the Sicilian dialect.
Director Scorsese also relied on De Niro as a mafioso, for example with the drama “Goodfellas” (1990) or most recently in 2019 with “The Irishman”. In the gangster epic, the actor transforms into hitman Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran, who has been rumored to have committed more than 25 murders.
Also successful with comedies
But De Niro, who has had his best performances as an expert on misfits, broken characters and gangsters, can be very different. In the past few years, he has primarily made a living as a comedy star. In the father-son comedy “And Then Came Dad” (2023) he slipped into the role of the Italian immigrant father Salvo, who always lives with a grim visage, full of prejudices and strict principles. In the comedy “Reinenervensache” he mimed a mafia boss who was mature for the psychiatrist.
In “My Bride, Her Father and I” and the two sequels, he is the impossible father-in-law, in “Always Trouble with Grandpa” a sex-mad grandpa who gets involved in a petty war with his grandson. In the mafia comedy “Kings Of Hollywood” he was hardly recognizable as an odd film producer with glasses, a mustache and long gray hair.
De Niro hasn’t skipped a genre. He starred in the romantic drama “Stanley & Iris” with Jane Fonda, in the action thriller “Heat” with Al Pacino, in the political satire “Wag the Dog” with Dustin Hoffman.
New York is his city
The son of an Italian-Irish family of artists grew up with his mother in New York’s Little Italy district. As a teenager he joined theater groups, later learning his craft in the workshops of Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. He has remained true to New York – with his production company Tribeca, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he founded the film festival of the same name.
He also remains closely connected to the mafia genre. He recently shot the crime thriller Wise Guys, directed by Barry Levinson (“Rain Man”, “Good Morning Vietnam”). The story revolves around the two mafia bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, who ruled New York in the 1950s and 1960s. When the cinema release is planned for next February, De Niro fans can look forward to twice as much – according to media reports, the doyen should play both main roles.