This article is about the actor. For his father, see Robert De Niro, Sr..
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Source: Wikipedia

This article is about the actor. For his father, see Robert De Niro, Sr..

Robert De Niro (/dəˈnɪroʊ/; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973. Then in 1974, he was cast as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, a role for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
His longtime collaboration with director Martin Scorsese began with 1973's Mean Streets, and later earned De Niro an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in the 1980 film Raging Bull. He would also earn nominations for Taxi Driver in 1976 and Cape Fear in 1991. De Niro received additional Academy Award nominations for Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978), Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990), and David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook (2012). His portrayal of gangster Jimmy Conway in Scorsese's Goodfellas earned him a BAFTA nomination in 1990.
De Niro has earned four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, for his work in New York, New York (1977), Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999), and Meet the Parents (2000). He has also simultaneously directed and starred in films such as 1993's A Bronx Tale and 2006's The Good Shepherd. De Niro has received accolades for his career, including the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.

Early life [edit]
Robert De Niro was born in Greenwich Village, New York City, the son of Virginia Holton Admiral, a painter and poet, and Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor. His father was of Italian and Irish descent, and his mother was of English, German, French, and Dutch ancestry. His Italian great-grandparents, Giovanni De Niro and Angelina Mercurio, emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of Campobasso, Molise; and his paternal grandmother, Helen O'Reilly, was the granddaughter of Edward O'Reilly, an immigrant from Ireland.
De Niro's parents, who had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown (Cape Cod), Massachusetts, divorced when he was three years old. De Niro was raised by his mother in the Little Italy neighborhood of Manhattan, and in Greenwich Village. His father lived within walking distance and Robert spent much time with him as he was growing up. De Niro attended PS 41, a public elementary school in Manhattan through the sixth grade, and then went to Elisabeth Irwin High School for seventh and eighth grades, the private upper school of the Little Red School House. He was accepted at the High School of Music and Art for the ninth grade, but only attended for a short time before transferring to a public junior high school. He began high school at the private McBurney School and later attended the private Rhodes Preparatory School, although he never graduated from either. Nicknamed "Bobby Milk" for his pallor, De Niro hung out with a group of street kids as a youth in Little Italy, some of whom have remained his lifelong friends. The direction of his future had already been determined by his stage debut at age ten when he played the Cowardly Lion in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. Along with finding relief from shyness through performing, De Niro was also entranced by the movies, and he dropped out of high school at age sixteen to pursue acting. De Niro studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory, as well as Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.
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