Robert De Niro Jr. (born August 17, 1943) is a two time Academy Award-winning American film actor, director, producer and founder of the Tribeca Film Festival.
He is regarded as one of the finest motion picture actors of his generation. Many regard him as the successor to Marlon Brando. He is particularly noted for his portrayal of mobsters in the gangster underworld, and conflicted, troubled characters, and for his enduring collaboration with director Martin Scorsese, not to mention his role in Meet the Parents.
Early life
De Niro was born in New York City, the son of Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter, sculptor, and poet, son of an Italian father and Irish mother, (De Niro's great-grandparents were Italian immigrants from the village of Ferrazzano, Molise, [1]), and Virginia Admiral, also a painter. They had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His parents divorced when he was two years old.
De Niro first attended the Little Red School House and was then enrolled by his mother at the High School of Music and Art in New York. He dropped out at the age of 13 and joined a Little Italy street gang, where he earned the nickname Bobby Milk due to his white complexion. He then had a falling-out with his father, although they were eventually reconciled when, at 18, he flew to Paris to bring his father home when he had been suffering from depression. De Niro attended the Stella Adler Conservatory, as well as Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio (although De Niro conflicted with Strasberg's methods, and used his membership there mostly as a professional advantage). At the age of 16 he toured in Chekhov's The Bear.
Film career
At the age of 20, in 1963, came De Niro's first important collaboration with Brian De Palma, when he appeared in The Wedding Party; it was not released until 1969, however. He spent much of the 1960s working in theater workshops and off-Broadway productions. He was an extra in the French film Three Rooms in Manhattan (1965), and was reunited with De Palma in Greetings (1968) and Hi, Mom (1970). He gained popular attention with his role as a dying Major League baseball player in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). The same year he began his fruitful collaboration with Scorsese when he played his memorable role as the smalltime Mafia hood "Johnny Boy" alongside Harvey Keitel's "Charlie" in Mean Streets. This led to a very successful relationship between the pair in films such as Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995). In these films, De Niro has primarily played charming sociopaths. Taxi Driver is particularly important to De Niro's career; his iconic performance as Travis Bickle shot him to stardom and forever linked De Niro's name with Bickle's famous "you talkin' to me?" monologue, which De Niro himself improvised.
In 1976 De Niro appeared , along Gerard Depardieu, in Bernardo Bertolucci's epic biographical exploration of life during WWII Novecento (1900), seen through the eyes of two Italian childhood friends at the opposite sides of society's hierarchy.
In 1978, De Niro played "Michael Vronsky" in the acclaimed Vietnam War film The Deer Hunter. Another notable role was in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America as the Jewish gangster "David 'Noodles' Aaronson" (1984). Fearing he had become typecast in such roles, from the mid-1980s, De Niro began expanding into occasional comedic roles, and has had much success there as well with such films as Brazil (1985), Midnight Run (1988), Wag the Dog (1997), Analyze This (1999), Analyze That (2002), Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004).