58 Fun Facts About Robert De Niro

What was the profession of both of Robert De Niro's parents?

Painters both, they were Greenwich Village artists who split when he was a toddler; decades later De Niro hung his father's big canvases on the walls of his own Manhattan restaurant.

What childhood nickname did De Niro earn for his pale complexion?

Bobby Milk was what the street kids of his Manhattan neighbourhood called the pale, sickly-looking teenager, who ran with a fairly tame local crew long before he played mobsters on screen.

De Niro's stage debut at age 10 was as which character in The Wizard of Oz?

The Cowardly Lion was an apt first part for a shy, sickly-looking boy, who found that performing was what eased his shyness.

De Niro was introduced to the Stanislavski system at the New York conservatory of which acting teacher?

Stella Adler had studied with Stanislavski himself in 1934 and came home teaching actors to build a role from imagination, not just their own memories; Marlon Brando was another of her students.

Which director cast De Niro in Greetings and Hi, Mom! before he ever worked with Scorsese?

Brian De Palma had already filmed him in 1963 for The Wedding Party, but it sat unreleased until 1969, so De Niro's first screen role reached cinemas after Greetings.

De Niro's breakthrough role in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) was a terminally ill player of which sport?

Baseball was new to him: De Niro had never played, so he drilled constantly and studied real ballplayers to pass as a big-league catcher, and the part first got him widely noticed.

What was the name of De Niro's small-time hood in Mean Streets (1973)?

Johnny Boy began his long partnership with Martin Scorsese, who let De Niro and Harvey Keitel improvise whole scenes, including their rambling talk behind the bar.

For The Godfather Part II, De Niro delivered most of his lines in what?

Sicilian dialects carry nearly all his dialogue, with only a few lines in English, so the New York-born actor spent weeks studying the language before the cameras rolled.

De Niro and Marlon Brando were the first pair of actors to win Oscars for playing which same character?

Vito Corleone won Oscars for both men, and neither was there to collect: Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his, and De Niro was away working, so Coppola accepted for him.

Which actress was 12 when she played Iris opposite De Niro in Taxi Driver, earning an Oscar nomination?

Jodie Foster had to pass a psychiatrist's assessment before she was allowed to take the role, a check that so dark a part would not harm a child of 12.

Which Taxi Driver line did De Niro improvise?

'You talkin' to me?' was De Niro's own invention on set, and in one telling he borrowed it from Bruce Springsteen's banter with a concert crowd.

In Bertolucci's 1900 (1976), De Niro's landowner Alfredo grows up alongside a peasant played by whom?

Gerard Depardieu's peasant Olmo and De Niro's landowner Alfredo grow up as close friends, then drift apart as one champions the workers and the other inherits the estate while fascism rises.

De Niro's studio boss in The Last Tycoon (1976) came from the unfinished last novel of which author?

F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 with the novel unfinished, having modelled its hero on the MGM producer Irving Thalberg; Elia Kazan filmed it and never directed again.

Which instrument did De Niro learn from Georgie Auld for New York, New York (1977)?

Saxophone lessons came from Georgie Auld, a veteran of Benny Goodman's band who also plays a bandleader in the film; the sound is Auld's own playing, with De Niro miming every note.

The Deer Hunter (1978) follows steelworkers from Clairton, a mill town in which state?

Pennsylvania's real steel town of Clairton gave the film its setting, and De Niro prepared by drinking, eating and playing pool with mill workers, though he was refused a shift in the mill.

De Niro piled on some 60 pounds mid-production to play which boxing champion's bloated retirement?

Jake LaMotta coached De Niro himself and judged him good enough to turn professional; filming then paused while the actor ate his way through France to play the champion gone to seed.

What was the name of De Niro's struggling stand-up comedian in The King of Comedy (1982)?

Rupert Pupkin was De Niro's own find: he bought the script and took it to Scorsese, who at first turned it down, and the finished film recouped barely $2.5 million of its $19 million budget.

Which Italian director cast De Niro as a Jewish gangster in his final film, Once Upon a Time in America?

Sergio Leone's cut of nearly four hours premiered at Cannes, but his American distributor trimmed more than an hour from it and put the story in chronological order over his objections; he never directed again.

Which Terry Gilliam dystopia features De Niro as Tuttle, a renegade heating engineer?

Brazil sat unreleased in America while Universal's boss pressed for a happy ending; Terry Gilliam answered with a Variety advert asking when it would come out, and the studio gave way after Los Angeles critics named it best picture.

In Angel Heart (1987), De Niro played a character with which devilishly punning name?

Louis Cyphre, said aloud, is Lucifer: the director wanted De Niro for the detective lead, but the actor asked for the Devil's cameo instead and grew his hair and beard long to play it.

In Midnight Run (1988), De Niro played bounty hunter Jack Walsh opposite which comic foil?

Charles Grodin plays the mob accountant he must drag from New York to Los Angeles; De Niro's turn to comedy had nearly come in Big, where he was offered the lead that went to Tom Hanks.

Who played Jesus in Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), a part De Niro had turned down?

Willem Dafoe won the part after Scorsese saw him in Platoon; an earlier attempt at the film in 1983, with Aidan Quinn cast as Jesus, had collapsed when Paramount pulled out.

Goodfellas was adapted from which non-fiction book by Nicholas Pileggi?

Wiseguy told the true story of mobster Henry Hill, but the film could not keep the name: a television crime drama was already called Wiseguy, so Scorsese's picture became Goodfellas.

Awakenings (1990), with De Niro as a catatonic patient, was based on a book by which neurologist?

Oliver Sacks is the model for the film's Dr Sayer, played by Robin Williams, while De Niro had to master the tics and frozen postures of the patients Sacks had treated.

What was the name of De Niro's vengeful ex-convict in Cape Fear (1991)?

Max Cady's menace was earned the hard way: De Niro packed on muscle and paid a dentist to grind his teeth down, then paid far more to have them repaired once filming was over.

De Niro's directorial debut, A Bronx Tale (1993), was based on a play by which co-star?

Chazz Palminteri had turned down offers of up to $1 million for his one-man show because he insisted on writing the script and playing its neighbourhood mob boss; De Niro agreed to both.

In the 1995 Vegas film with Stone and Pesci, what was De Niro's Sam Rothstein nicknamed?

Ace was modelled on a real Chicago sports bettor known as 'Lefty', who ran four Las Vegas gaming houses for the mob and, like his screen double, walked away from a car bomb.

Which actor first shared a scene with De Niro in Heat (1995), though both had starred in The Godfather Part II?

Al Pacino and De Niro never met in the Godfather sequel because their stories run decades apart; in Heat they finally face each other over coffee in a Los Angeles diner.

In which 1996 drama did De Niro play a priest to four boys abused in a detention centre?

Sleepers cast him as the neighbourhood priest who, once he learns what the guards did, lies under oath to hand two of the grown boys an alibi for murder.

In Wag the Dog (1997), De Niro's spin doctor and Hoffman's producer fake a war in which country?

Albania's fake war soon looked prophetic: a month after the film opened the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke, and when US missiles hit Sudan that summer the press reached for the film's title.

In Analyze This (1999), De Niro played an insecure mob boss whose therapist was played by whom?

Billy Crystal's psychiatrist treats a mob boss felled by panic attacks, with De Niro sending up his own gangster image; the comedy took about $176 million and led to a sequel.

What is the name of De Niro's ex-CIA father-in-law in the Meet the Parents films?

Jack Byrnes wires his daughter's boyfriend to a lie detector in a scene that came from De Niro himself and was not in the original script; the comedy went on to take about $330 million.

De Niro passed on a part in which 2006 Scorsese film and directed The Good Shepherd instead?

The Departed went ahead without him and finally won Scorsese his only Oscar for directing, for a film that De Niro had chosen to pass up.

In which 2004 thriller does De Niro's doctor offer to clone a couple's dead son?

Godsend's doctor has an agenda of his own, secretly mixing his own dead son's DNA into the clone; critics buried the film, with barely one review in thirty collected by Rotten Tomatoes a positive one.

In which 2007 fantasy did De Niro play Captain Shakespeare, a feared sky pirate with a secret love of dresses?

Stardust's pirate captain keeps up a bloodthirsty front for his crew while privately loving to dress in women's clothes, a role the film built up from a character Neil Gaiman's novel barely mentions.

For which David O. Russell film did De Niro earn his first Oscar nomination in over 20 years?

Silver Linings Playbook was personal for David O. Russell, who took on the story because his own son lives with bipolar disorder, the condition its hero battles; De Niro plays the hero's father.

Which real-life fraudster did De Niro play in the 2017 HBO film The Wizard of Lies?

Bernie Madoff shows little remorse in De Niro's portrayal, blaming the victims of his Ponzi scheme for letting him fool them before asking his interviewer, 'Do you think I'm a sociopath?'

What was the name of De Niro's talk-show host in Joker (2019)?

Murray Franklin turns an old role inside out: in The King of Comedy De Niro was the obsessed comedian hounding a talk-show host, and in Joker he is the host with an obsessed comedian as his guest.

The Irishman (2019) was De Niro's ninth film with Scorsese and the first since which 1995 film?

Casino had been their eighth film together; the reunion waited 24 years and needed Netflix to step in when Paramount backed away from the swelling budget of a film that digitally de-aged its stars.

Whom did De Niro play in Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)?

William King Hale posed as the Osage's generous friend while arranging the murders of his nephew's in-laws for their oil rights; a federal jury finally convicted him of one killing in 1929.

De Niro co-founded which film festival to help Lower Manhattan recover after the September 11 attacks?

Tribeca Film Festival was running by the following May, launched by De Niro, producer Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff; it opened with About a Boy, a comedy that De Niro and Rosenthal had produced themselves.

Which Japanese chef is De Niro's partner in a restaurant chain bearing the chef's first name?

Nobu Matsuhisa met him as a regular at his Los Angeles restaurant and turned down De Niro's first plea to open in New York; the actor waited four years, asked again, and the first Nobu opened in 1994.

Which honour did De Niro receive from Barack Obama in 2016?

The Presidential Medal of Freedom came with a gentle roast: Obama summed up his career as 'a mobster who needs therapy' and 'a father-in-law who is scarier than a mobster'.

Which girl group's 1984 fan song 'Robert De Niro's Waiting...' reached number three in the UK?

Bananarama's bright tune hides an argument: Siobhan Fahey says its lyric tells a much darker story than it sounds, while bandmate Sara Dallin insists it is simply about hero worship.

De Niro's ageing boxer comes out of retirement in Grudge Match (2013) to fight a rival played by whom?

Sylvester Stallone's casting was the whole joke: the stars of Rocky and Raging Bull squaring up as pensioners, 16 years after the pair had shared the screen in Cop Land.

Which Italian-American organisation opposed De Niro receiving Italian citizenship in 2006?

Sons of Italy's president wrote to Italy's prime minister that his gangster roles had tarnished Italians' image; Rome went ahead anyway, and De Niro took his passport saying he had 'finally come home'.

Which Quentin Tarantino film cast De Niro as a slow-witted ex-convict caught up in an airline cash-smuggling scheme?

Jackie Brown gave him a sidekick part as a drug-addled ex-con; Tarantino built the film from the crime novel Rum Punch, renaming its heroine from Burke to Brown.

In The Intern (2015), De Niro's 70-year-old widower goes to work for a fashion-site founder played by whom?

Anne Hathaway took the part after Reese Witherspoon left the project, which had first been planned for Tina Fey opposite Michael Caine; the comedy went on to gross $195 million.

Which award did Cannes give De Niro at its opening ceremony in May 2025?

The Honorary Palme d'Or came with a fight: De Niro used his acceptance speech to attack Donald Trump's proposed 100% tariff on foreign-made films, saying you can't put a price on creativity but apparently can put a tariff on it.

De Niro vanished under heavy make-up in Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film of which novel?

Frankenstein's producer, Francis Ford Coppola, had meant to direct it himself but, with his own Dracula just behind him, handed it to Branagh, who also played the scientist opposite De Niro's Creature.

In which 1998 thriller is De Niro's character hired to steal a mysterious briefcase in France?

Ronin takes its name from Japan's masterless samurai, a fair description of its crew of former spies turned guns for hire, and the film never reveals what is inside the case they fight over.

De Niro auditioned for Sonny in the first Godfather, a part that went to which actor?

James Caan got Sonny, and De Niro was handed the small part of Paulie Gatto instead; he left it for a mob comedy, yet Coppola remembered the audition and cast him in the sequel.

In True Confessions (1981), De Niro's priest clashes with a detective brother played by whom?

Robert Duvall's detective pursues a murder modelled on the Black Dahlia case so doggedly that he wrecks the career of his brother, De Niro's ambitious monsignor, who ends up in a desert parish.

De Niro had suits and silk underwear made by Al Capone's own tailors to play the gangster in which 1987 film?

The Untouchables never shows the underwear; Bob Hoskins, kept on standby in case De Niro said no, was sent a cheque and a thank-you note for the part he never played.

In Guilty by Suspicion (1991), De Niro plays a film director caught up in what?

The Hollywood blacklist costs his character everything once he refuses to name four people, a childhood friend among them, as communists; the part drew on the real blacklisted director John Berry.

Which cartoon villain did De Niro play in live action in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000)?

Fearless Leader let De Niro send himself up, mangling his own Taxi Driver mirror speech in a comedy he co-produced, which earned back less than half of its $76 million budget.

Which real-life figure did De Niro portray opposite Alec Baldwin's Trump on Saturday Night Live?

Robert Mueller turned up in sketches alongside Ben Stiller as Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, reuniting the sparring in-laws of Meet the Parents, and the cameos earned De Niro an Emmy nomination.

Which This Boy's Life co-star presented De Niro with the SAG Life Achievement Award?

Leonardo DiCaprio owed him his break: De Niro picked the teenager out at the auditions for This Boy's Life, which became DiCaprio's first major film role.