Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro | |
|---|---|
| File:DeNiro.jpg | |
| Born | Robert Mario De Niro, Jr. |
| Spouse(s) | Diahnne Abbott (1976-1988) Grace Hightower (1997-) |
| Awards | NYFCC Award for Best Supporting Actor 1973 Bang the Drum Slowly NYFCC Award for Best Actor 1976 Taxi Driver 1980 Raging Bull 1990 Goodfellas ; Awakenings |
Robert Mario De Niro Jr., credited professionally as Robert De Niro (born August 17, 1943), is a two-time Academy Award-winning American film actor, director, and producer.
He is noted for his method acting and portrayal of conflicted, troubled characters, for his enduring collaboration with director Martin Scorsese and for his early work with director Brian De Palma.
Biography
Early life
De Niro was born in New York City, to Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor, and Virginia Admiral, a painter.[1] De Niro's father was Catholic and of Irish and Italian descent and his mother a Presbyterian-raised atheist of French, Dutch, and German descent.[2][3] His Italian great-grandparents, Mario and Sofia Di Niro, had emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of Campobasso, Molise[4] in the early 20th century.[citation needed] His parents, who had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts, divorced when he was two years old. De Niro grew up in the "Little Italy" area of New York City. His childhood nickname was "Bobby Milk" due to his pale complexion.
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. He then had a falling-out with his father, though they were eventually reconciled when, at 18, he flew to Paris to bring home his father, who had been suffering from depression.[citation needed]
De Niro attended the Stella Adler Conservatory, as well as Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio (though 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.
Early film career
At the age of 20, in 1963, came De Niro's first film role and 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 made his official film debut after he reunited with De Palma in Greetings (1968) and later reprised his Greetings role in 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 (1973). In 1974, De Niro played a pivotal role in Francis Coppola's The Godfather Part II playing young Don Vito Corleone. His performance earned him his first Academy Award of Best Supporting Actor.
After working with him in Mean Streets he had a very successful working relationship with Scorcese 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 improvised himself.
In 1976 De Niro appeared, along with Gerard Depardieu, in Bernardo Bertolucci's epic biographical exploration of life during World War II, 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, for which he was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role . He was offered role of Cowboy in director Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979) but turned it down. The role went instead to Tom McKitterick.[5]
Later film career
Praised for his commitment to roles (stemming from his background in Method acting), De Niro gained 50 pounds (27 kg) and learned how to box for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, ground his teeth for Cape Fear, lived in Sicily for The Godfather Part II, worked as a cab driver for three months for Taxi Driver, and learned to play the saxophone for New York, New York. He also put on weight and shaved his hairline to play Al Capone in The Untouchables.
De Niro’s brand of Method acting includes employing whatever extreme tactic he feels is necessary to elicit the best performance from those he is acting with. During the filming of The King of Comedy, De Niro directed a slew of anti-Semitic epithets at co-star Jerry Lewis. An enraged Lewis claims he was “going for Bobby’s throat”.[6]
Fearing he had become typecast in mob roles — another of which was Jewish gangster David "Noodles" Aaronson in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984) — De Niro from the mid-1980s began expanding into occasional comedic roles, and has had much success there as well with such films as Brazil (1985), in which he had a small role; the hit action-comedy Midnight Run (1988), Showtime (film) (2002) opposite Eddie Murphy; and the film-and-sequel pairs Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That (2002), and Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004).
Other films include Falling in Love (1984), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987) "Angel Heart (1987)" Heat (1995), Wag the Dog (1997) and Ronin (1998). In 1997, he reteamed with Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta, along with Sylvester Stallone, in the crime drama Cop Land. De Niro proved he was able to play a supporting role taking a back seat to Stallone, Keitel and Liotta.
De Niro is considered[citation needed] a skilled observer of physical and trivial details, from the way a cigarette is held by a mobster in GoodFellas to the kind of shirt-jacket the character needed to wear in Raging Bull. In 1995 De Niro starred in Michael Mann's Heat, along with fellow actor Al Pacino. The duo drew much attention from fans as both have generally been compared throughout their careers. Though both Pacino and De Niro starred in The Godfather Part II, they shared no screen time. On 18 May 2007 Variety.com brought the news that De Niro and Pacino will pair up again. The stars have signed up to play police investigators hunting a serial killer in thriller Righteous Kill.[7]
In 2004, De Niro read for the voice of Don Lino, the antagonist in Shark Tale, opposite Will Smith. This was De Niro's first experience with voice acting. When interviewed about his role in Shark Tale, De Niro said that participating in an animated cartoon was one of the most fun aspects of his Hollywood career.
De Niro had to turn down a role in The Departed (Martin Sheen taking the role instead) due to commitments preparing The Good Shepherd. He said "I wanted to. I wish I could've been able to, but I was preparing The Good Shepherd so much that I couldn't take the time to. I was trying to figure a way to do it while I was preparing. It just didn't seem possible."[8]
In De Niro's next project, he directed and co-starred in The Good Shepherd (2006), also starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The movie also reunited him onscreen with Joe Pesci, with whom De Niro had starred in Raging Bull, GoodFellas and Casino.
On June 7 2006, it was announced that De Niro donated his film archive, including scripts, costumes, and props, to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. De Niro has said that he is working with Martin Scorsese on a new project. "I'm trying to actually work..Eric Roth (screenwriter) and myself and Marty are working on a script now, trying to get it done."[8]
De Niro has won two Academy Awards: Best Actor for his role in Raging Bull; and Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather Part II.
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De Niro and Marlon Brando are the only actors who won Academy Awards for portraying the same character: Brando won for playing the elderly Don Vito Corleone (though he declined the award) in The Godfather while De Niro later won the award for playing the young Vito in The Godfather Part II. Brando and De Niro did not work together on screen until The Score (2001). De Niro actually auditioned for the role of Sonny in the first Godfather[9] but the role was given to James Caan. When The Godfather Part II was in preproduction, the director, Francis Ford Coppola, remembered De Niro's audition, and cast him to play the young Vito Corleone. De Niro's performance is one of only four to win an Academy Award for working in a foreign language, as he primarily spoke Italian, with very few phrases in English ("I didn't come here to fight with you" and "I make him an offer he can't refuse").
Personal life
De Niro has been married twice. He has a stepdaughter, Drena and son Raphael with first wife Dianne Abbott, as well as twin sons Julian Henry and Aaron Kendrick (conceived by in vitro fertilization) from a long-term live-in relationship with former model Toukie Smith. Raphael, a former actor, now works in New York real estate.
Since 1989, De Niro has been investing in the TriBeCa neighborhood in lower Manhattan. His capital ventures have included co-founding the film studio TriBeCa Productions, the hugely popular TriBeCa Film Festival, and finally the TriBeCa Grill, Nobu, and Layla restaurants that usually need advance reservations.
In February 1998, during a film shoot in France, he was taken in for questioning for nine hours by French police and questioned by a magistrate, over a prostitution ring. De Niro denied any involvement saying that he had never paid for sex, "and even if I had, it wouldn't have been a crime".[10] The magistrate wanted to speak to him after his name was mentioned by one of the call girls. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he said, "I will never return to France. I will advise my friends against going to France", and he would "send your Legion of Honour back to the ambassador, as soon as possible". French judicial sources say that the actor is regarded as a potential witness, not a suspect. In 2003, Robert De Niro, with film director Woody Allen, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis and writer George Plimpton joined a pro-French tourism campaign as a direct response to anti-French sentiment in the US related to the Iraq invasion.
In 2003, De Niro was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The prognosis for De Niro, who was 60 at the time, was good, according to his publicist, Stan Rosenfield.
"Doctors say the condition was detected at an early stage because of regular checkups," Rosenfield says. "Because of the early detection and his excellent physical condition, doctors project a full recovery." Rosenfield declined to give further details about the actor's condition or course of treatment. De Niro's father, painter Robert De Niro Sr., died of cancer in 1993 at age 71.
De Niro is among a number of celebrities who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. They include Yankees manager Joe Torre, former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani, comedian Jerry Lewis, former senator Bob Dole and retired general Norman Schwarzkopf. Rosenfield credited the early discovery of De Niro's cancer to the actor's "proactive personal health-care program".
In 1997, De Niro re-married his second wife, Grace Hightower, a former flight attendant, at their estate near Marbletown in upstate New York (De Niro also has residences on the east and west sides of Manhattan). Their son Elliot was born in 1998 and the couple filed for divorce shortly after his birth, although the action was never officially finalized.
De Niro, whose paternal great-grandparents emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the region of Molise, Italy, was due to be bestowed with honorary Italian citizenship at the Venice Film Festival in September 2004. However, the Sons of Italy lodged a protest with Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, claiming De Niro had damaged the image of Italians and Italian-Americans by frequently portraying them in criminal roles. Culture Minister Giuliano Urbani dismissed the objections and the ceremony was rescheduled to go forward in Rome in October. Controversy flared again when De Niro failed to show for two media appearances in Italy that month, which De Niro blamed on "serious communication problems" that weren't "handled properly" on his end, and stating, "The last thing I would want to do is offend anyone. I love Italy." The citizenship was conferred to De Niro on October 21, 2006, during the Rome Film Festival finale.
De Niro is a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party, and vocally supported Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. Filmmaker Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 includes a clip of De Niro standing next to Gore at a rally; Moore identifies him as "that Taxi Driver guy". De Niro publicly supported John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. In 1998, he lobbied Congress against impeaching President Bill Clinton,[11] and in August 2004 announced he would not collect his honorary Italian citizenship in person so as to avoid discouraging Italians living in America from voting for Kerry, following controversy over the earlier citizenship protest. (See above.) De Niro also narrated a documentary about the September 11, 2001 attacks, shown on CBS and centering on video footage made by Jules Naudet and Gedeon Naudet, which focused on the role of firefighters following the attacks. De Niro was a supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq but hasn't made any comments about it since then. While promoting his movie The Good Shepherd with co-star Matt Damon on the December 8, 2006 episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews, De Niro was asked who he would like to see as president of the United States. De Niro responded, "Well, I think of two people: Hillary Clinton and Obama".[12]
Filmography
Awards and nominations
Academy Award
- Won: Best Supporting Actor, The Godfather, Part II (1974)
- Nominated: Best Actor, Taxi Driver (1976)
- Nominated: Best Actor, The Deer Hunter (1978)
- Won: Best Actor, Raging Bull (1980)
- Nominated: Best Actor, Awakenings (1990)
- Nominated: Best Actor, Cape Fear (1991)
BAFTA Award
- Nominated: Best Newcomer, The Godfather, Part II (1976)
- Nominated: Best Actor, Taxi Driver (1977)
- Nominated: Best Actor, The Deer Hunter (1980)
- Nominated: Best Actor, Raging Bull (1982)
- Nominated: Best Actor, The King of Comedy (1984)
- Nominated: Best Actor, Goodfellas (1991)
Golden Globe Award
- Nominated: Best Actor - Motion Picure Drama, Taxi Driver (1977)
- Nominated: Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical/Comedy, New York, New York (1978)
- Nominated: Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, The Deer Hunter (1979)
- Won: Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, Raging Bull (1981)
- Nominated: Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical/Comedy, Midnight Run (1989)
- Nominated: Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, Cape Fear (1992)
- Nominated: Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical/Comedy, Analyze This (2000)
- Nominated: Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical/Comedy, Meet the Parents (2001)
References
- ^ http://www.filmreference.com/film/88/Robert-DE-Niro.html
- ^ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5982475/
- ^ http://www.adherents.com/people/pd/Robert_DeNiro.html
- ^ http://www.deliciousitaly.com/visualizza.php?Id=286®ione_id=1
- ^ NonStarring.com: Robert De Niro
- ^ http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg6n6657_55cffn74
- ^ http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117965130.html?categoryid=13
- ^ a b Graham, Jamie (2007-03). "The Total Film Interview". Total Film (125): 105.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help); Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ The Godfather Family: A Look Inside (1991 documentary)
- ^ BBC News
- ^ [1]
- ^ MSNBC.com
External links
- Robert De Niro at IMDb
- Robert De Niro Online (fan site)
- Tiscali UK: Robert De Niro
- Robert De Niro at Rotten Tomatoes