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| Robert De Niro was born in New York on August 17, 1943. Both his parents were artists; his mother was a painter and his father was a sculptor. In the Little Italy neighborhood where he grew up, De Niro was known as Bobby Milk, due to his pale complexion. He was a lonely and shy boy, who read quite a lot. He overcame his timidity when, at age ten, he played the cowardly lion in a school play of ”The Wizard of Oz”. At age 16, De Niro decided to pursue an acting career. He learned method acting while studying for Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, who taught many would-be stars of the time. De Niro supported himself by playing in off-Broadway productions through most of the 60’s. He also appeared in a handful of movies, but it wasn’t until he met Martin Scorsese at a party, that his career would take off. Scorsese and De Niro had similar backgrounds and they shared a passion for movies. Scorsese asked De Niro to play Johnny Boy, a kind of stupid small time gangster, in his film MEAN STREETS. This would be the beginning of a now legendary star-director team. The film is a landmark movie. Based on De Niro’s convincing performance in MEAN STREETS, Francis Ford Coppola offered De Niro the part as Vito Corleone in THE GODFATHER: PART II. De Niro accepted and studied Marlon Brando’s performance in THE GODFATHER very closely. De Niro was so effective that he won an Academy Award for it. Vito Corleone is the only part in film history that two actors have won Acadamy Awards for (Brando won in 1972). In 1976 De Niro put in a remarkable effort to get inside the skin of cabbie Travis Bickle, a Viet Nam vet in New York desperately wanting to be a somebody. This was in Scorsese’s masterpiece TAXI DRIVER. The film is full of moving scenes, often dark and frightening but with a beautiful Bernard Herrman score. De Niro once again disappeared into his character when he played the lead in Michael Cimino’s risky project THE DEER HUNTER. The film portrays some Pensylvania steelworkers who go to Viet Nam to fight. The film was surprisingly a major hit at the Oscar’s, winning five awards. It is considered one of the finest films of the 70’s. Then he would work out at the gym to be fit to play boxer Jake LaMotta in Scorseses masterpiece RAGING BULL. The film has some resemblance to MEAN STREETS as both films portray small time gangsters. De Niro then gained 60 pounds to play an older Jake LaMotta at the end of the film. This is a classic, considered by many to be the best film of the 80’s. De Niro won a well deserved Best Actor Oscar. Another brilliant performance is as Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese’s THE KING OF COMEDY, a little gem that flopped. De Niro worked with Italian director Sergio Leone for his epic gangster classic ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Leone, a perfectionist beyond reason, had worked on the script for 20 years. De Niro would score again as a gangster, this time Al Capone, in Brian De Palma’s hit THE UNTOUCHABLES. Then he would paly in the action comedy MIDNIGHT RUN opposite Charles Grodin. The film would be a big hit and the first successful comedy for De Niro. In 1990 De Niro once again worked with Scorsese, this time ine the outstanding mafia film GOODFELLAS. Then he starred in Scorsese’s remake of CAPE FEAR opposite Nick Nolte, again scoring a major hit. De Niro founded his own production company, Tribeca, and made his directorial debut in 1993’s A BRONX TALE. The film earned praise. During the 90’s, De Niro worked at a high pace, often making three films per year. He no longer gets inside his characters the same way he did in the earlier stages of his career. He seems indifferent to his acting job in some of his films. Nevertheless he scores big now and again. As in 1995, when the public got a rare opportunity to see De Niro and Al Pacino in the same film: HEAT, a crime drama, a duel between a cop (Pacino) and a robber (De Niro). More recent hits are ANALYZE THIS, RONIN and 15 MINUTES. De Niro has always kept his private life as much a secret as possible. He rarely gives an interview, and if the press make statements about him, he seldom bothers to make a comment himself. He married Diahne Abbott in 1976, with whom he has a daugher, actress Drena De Niro. He separated from Abbott in 1988 and got married to Grace Hightower in 1997, they divorced in 2002. Robert De Niro is an actor of outstanding range. Perhaps the finest of his generation. |
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