Robert De Niro

Happy Birthday to Robert De Niro! One of the most accomplished and respected actors of the 20th century and beyond, Oscar winner Robert De Niro has been an intense and formidable presence in a string of acclaimed films directed by Martin Scorsese, including Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990), as well as such features as The Godfather Part II (1974), 1900 (1976), Heat (1995), Meet the Parents (2000) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Born Robert Anthony De Niro, Jr. in New York's Manhattan borough, he was the son of artists Robert De Niro, Sr., and Virginia Admiral, who divorced when their son was two years of age. He developed an interest in performing through visits to local movie houses with his father, and soon began acting in school productions while also receiving his earliest training at Maria Picator's Dramatic Workshop, where his mother worked as a typist and copyeditor. De Niro briefly attended the High School of Music and Art but left in the ninth grade, citing a high level of competition and his own shyness. But after a cross-country trip to visit relatives in 1960, the 16-year-old De Niro decided to leave high school altogether and enroll at the Stella Adler Conservatory. After additional training with Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio, he began auditioning for film roles. Though he would make his screen acting debut in Brian De Palma's low-budget comedy The Wedding Party, the film would not be released until 1969, so his uncredited turn the French comedy Three Rooms in Manhattan (1965) would mark his actual film debut. Three years later, he reunited with De Palma for the bawdy freeform comedy Greetings (1968), which earned a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. He bounced between arthouse and drive-in fare for his next few projects, teaming again with De Palma for Hi, Mom! (1970), a comedy about amateur pornographers, and playing a drug-addicted Depression Era gangster in Roger Corman's Bloody Mama (1970) alongside Shelly Winter, before earning critical praise as a terminally ill baseball player in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973). That same year, he also starred as a dangerously off-kilter hood in Mean Streets (1973), which marked the beginning of his long and celebrated collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. The film would serve as a launching pad for a remarkable string of projects in the 1970s, beginning in 1974 with The Godfather Part II, which earned him an Oscar for his performance - entirely in Sicilian - as the young Vito Corleone. Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), which brought a second Oscar nomination for his turn as a psychotic who believed himself to be a criminal avenger, and Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976) soon followed, as did his thinly veiled portrait of studio head Irving Thalberg in Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon (1976) and a third Oscar nod for Michael Cimino's harrowing Vietnam War drama The Deer Hunter (1979). After teaming with Scorsese for the period drama New York, New York (1977), the duo reunited again for Raging Bull (1980), a elegiac portrait of boxer Jake LaMotta; De Niro, who gained 60 pounds to portray LaMotta in his twilight years, earned a second Oscar for his intensely committed and rigorously physical performance.

The dawn of the 1980s saw De Niro working with some of the most acclaimed filmmakers in the world, including the scabrous King of Comedy (1982) with Scorsese, the epic gangster film Once Upon a Time in America for Sergio Leone, the fantasy Brazil (1984) for Terry Gilliam, and the sweeping period drama The Mission (1985) for Roland Joffe. He was evil incarnate in Alan Parker's Angel Heart (1987) He then reunited with De Palma to play a malevolent Al Capone in the director's big-screen take of The Untouchables (1987) before dipping into mainstream waters as a foul-mouthed skip tracer in Martin Brest's popular action-comedy Midnight Run (1988). In the '90s, De Niro settled into a breathless schedule of acting roles in both studio and arthouse features. The most notable of these was his turn as an Irish mobster in an Italian crime family in Scorsese's celebrated Goodfellas (1990), as well as back-to-back Oscar nominations for Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1991), which cast him as a comatose patient revived by Dr. Oliver Sacks' experimental therapy, and Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear (1992), with De Niro as a feral criminal pursuing lawyer Nick Nolte's family. Between these efforts were collaborations with Martin Ritt and Jane Fonda in Stanley & Iris (1990), Ron Howard on the firefighter drama Backdraft (1991), Bill Murray in John McNaughton's Mad Dog and Glory (1993), and Kenneth Branagh, who cast him as the Monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994). De Niro also found time during this period to make his directorial debut with A Bronx Tale (1993), a sentimental period piece based on co-star Chazz Palminteri's nostalgic one-man show, and a reunion with Scorsese and frequent co-star Joe Pesci for Casino (1995), a story of organized crime in Las Vegas. De Niro starred in the coming-of-age film This Boy's Life (1993), based on the memoir of the same name by Tobias Wolff. It features Ellen Barkin and Leonardo DiCaprio. He would cap the decade with several high-quality projects, including a supporting turn for Quentin Tarantino in Jackie Brown (1997) and a lead in two superlative caper films, John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998) and Michael Mann's Heat (1995). He appeared in James Mangold's Cop Land (1997), a crime-drama co-starring Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta. De Niro plays Internal Affairs investigator Lt. Moe Tilden, who explores police corruption in a New Jersey town. De Niro co-starred and co-produced Wag the Dog (1997). The film is a political satire about a biased publicist (De Niro) and a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) who fabricate a war in Albania to cover up a U.S president's sex scandal. In 1999, De Niro ventured back into crime-comedy, he was cast as an insecure mob boss opposite Billy Crystal and Lisa Kudrow in Harold Ramis' Analyze This. The film was a box office hit and De Niro was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes. In Flawless (1999), De Niro appeared as a homophobic police officer, who suffers a stroke, and is assigned to a rehabilitative program with a gay singer.

In 2000, De Niro produced and starred in his first live-action animation comedy, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. He voiced the character Fearless Leader, who is a dictator and employer of two mobsters. The film was critically panned. That same year, he starred in the comedy Meet the Parents opposite Ben Stiller as Jack Byrnes, a former CIA operative who takes a dislike to Stiller's character. Film critics welcomed De Niro's transition as a comic actor and ability to make audiences laugh. De Niro followed up with a heist, in Frank Oz's The Score (2001), starring Edward Norton, Angela Bassett and Marlon Brando. The next year, he played an LAPD detective opposite Eddie Murphy in the flop action-comedy Showtime. He appeared in Analyze That (2002), a sequel to 1999's Analyze This. Filming began in New York City, seven months after the September 11 attacks. De Niro insisted on filming there, stating "It's a New York story, a New York movie. We always intended to keep it there and I'm glad we were able to do it" Several critics consider De Niro's career as having begun to slump in the early 2000s, with De Niro starring in roles that were less dramatic than those in the previous decade. He returned to the screen in 2004, playing a doctor in the fantasy drama Godsend. As of 2020, the film is De Niro's poorest-performing work; Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 4% based on 139 critic reviews. In 2005, De Niro starred in the horror film Hide and Seek opposite Dakota Fanning, playing Dr. David Callaway who leaves the city with his traumatized daughter after the mother's suicide. Although the film was a financial success, some critics thought De Niro had been miscast, and queried his decision to star in a mediocre feature. In 2006, De Niro turned down a role in The Departed to direct his second film, the spy thriller The Good Shepherd, a fictional account about the growth of the CIA during its formative years. Despite starring some of Hollywood's leading actors. Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Alec Baldwin, the film was a commercial and critical failure, Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, Sandra Hall noted its slow pace, stating "There's a potentially fascinating slice of American history here, but De Niro has carved it up with an excruciatingly dull knife" He hasn't directed a film since it's failure.

His sole project in 2007 was Matthew Vaughn's Stardust, a fantasy adventure, based on Neil Gaiman's 1999 novel of the same name. The following year, he starred in the police procedural thriller Righteous Kill opposite Al Pacino, both playing New York City detectives who investigate serial executions of criminals who escaped justice. In 2010, he had a minor part as Senator John McLaughlin in the action film Machete. He co-starred with Bradley Cooper in Limitless (2011) directed by Neil Burger. De Niro made his first appearance in a David O. Russell film, in the romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook (2012), as the father of Pat Solatano (Bradley Cooper), who is released from a psychiatric hospital and moves back in with his parents to rebuild his life. The film was a critical and commercial success, earning eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for De Niro. Next, he was cast in 2013's The Big Wedding, Killing Season, and The Family; all three were met with mainly a negative response. His other 2013 release, Last Vegas, received some respectable reviews. Co-starring Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and Mary Steenburgen, n 2015, he starred in Nancy Meyers' comedy The Intern alongside Anne Hathaway. He starred in the biographical drama Joy (2015), opposite Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, about an American inventor Joy Mangano. In 2017, De Niro starred as Bernie Madoff in Barry Levinson's HBO film The Wizard of Lies, a performance which earned him critical praise and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Television Movie. In 2019, De Niro returned to the screen by playing talk show host Murray Franklin in Todd Phillips' Joker, The film was a commercial success, and earned eleven nominations at the Academy Awards. Also, that year, De Niro reunited with Scorsese for The Irishman, based on the 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. It is their ninth feature film together and the first since 1995's Casino, and co-stars Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, and Joe Pesci. On September 25, 2020, De Niro appeared in Nancy Meyers' comedy short film Father of the Bride Part 3(ish). The short, co-starred Diane Keaton, Steve Martin, Kieran Culkin, Martin Short and Florence Pugh. In January 2021, De Niro signed on for the historical comedy Amsterdam, playing an army veteran. Released in October 2022, the ensemble includes Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant and Anya Taylor-Joy. In 2023, De Niro played cattleman William Hale in Killers of the Flower Moon, an adaptation of the book of the same name by David Grann. He starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. Directed by Scorsese, it was reported that the film's budget of $200 million had prompted him to seek Netflix or Apple TV+ for production and distribution. In 2023, De Niro will appear in the comedy About My Father, and in the television series Nada. In August 2022, De Niro signed on to star in the Warner Bros. mob drama Wise Guys, directed by Barry Levinson. On March 1, 2023, it was announced that De Niro will produce and star in the six-episode limited series Zero Day for Netflix, a conspiracy thriller created by Eric Newman and Noah Oppenheim,

He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2009, De Niro received the Kennedy Center Honor, and received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama in 2016. De Niro and producer Jane Rosenthal founded the film and television production company TriBeCa Productions in 1989, which has produced several films alongside his own. Also with Rosenthal, he founded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002. Six of De Niro's films have been inducted into the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".