Nickname
Bobby Milk (childhood, due to his pallor)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Height
5' 9½" (1.77 m)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mini biography
Robert De Niro, who is thought of as one of the greatest actors of his time, was born in New York City in 1943 to two artists. He was trained at the Stella Adler Conservatory and the American Workshop. He first gained fame for his role in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), but he gained his reputation as a volatile actor in Mean Streets (1973), which was his first film with director Martin Scorsese. In 1974 De Niro received an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in The Godfather: Part II (1974) and received Academy Award nomations for best actor in Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Cape Fear (1991). He won the best actor award in 1980 for Raging Bull (1980). De Niro currently heads his own production company, Tribeca Film Center, and made his directorial debut in 1993 with A Bronx Tale (1993).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spouse
Grace Hightower (17 June 1997 - present) 1 child
Diahnne Abbott (1976 - 1988) (divorced) 1 child

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trade mark
Often played characters that were often prone to brutal violence and/or characters who were borderline psychotics.

Known for method acting techniques with his characters by heavily studying their backgrounds.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trivia
Also co-owns several restaurants in New York including Nobu and Layla.

Drena De Niro is his daughter through adoption. She is Diahnne Abbott's daughter from a previous marriage.

He and his wife, Grace Hightower, had their first child, Elliot. [18 March 1998]

Caught up in a Paris prostitution ring investigation. De Niro, denying any involvement, vowed never to return to France again. [1998]

Father of actor Raphael De Niro

Ranked #5 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]

Turned down the role of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Son of Robert De Niro Snr., an abstract expressionist, and Virginia Admiral, a painter. Studied at Actors Studio with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg.

In his 1980 Oscar acceptance speech he thanked Joey LaMotta (brother of Jake LaMotta), who was at the time suing United Artists for Raging Bull (1980)'s portrayal of him.

He formed his production company, TriBeCa Productions, in 1989.

He owns a restaurant, "Ago" in West Hollywood.

Had two twin sons with his girlfriend Toukie Smith, Aaron Kendrick De Niro and Julian Henry De Niro (October 20, 1995) conceived by in-vitro fecundation.

Although he is commonly referred to as an Italian-American actor, De Niro is actually three-quarters Irish in ancestry. He was, however, quite close to his Italian paternal grandfather, whom Robert visited frequently in Syracuse, NY when he was young.

Was offered but turned down the role of Sal the pizza shop owner in Do the Right Thing (1989).

He is the second actor to win an Oscar for portraying Vito Corleone. He and Marlon Brando are the only two actors to win an Oscar for playing the same character.

He first discovered his love for acting at age 10 when he portrayed The Cowardly Lion in a local production of "The Wizard of Oz". He dropped out of high school to join a gang.

Formerly held the World Record for Most Weight Gained for a Movie, in gaining over 60 pounds for his role in Raging Bull (1980). But seven years later, Vincent D'Onofrio eclipsed him in gaining 70 pounds for his role in Full Metal Jacket (1987).

Three movies (at least) that De Niro has appeared in have the song "Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones noticeably featured in the soundtrack - The Fan (1996), Casino (1995) and Goodfellas (1990).

Ranked #78 in Premiere's 2002 annual Power 100 List.

In 1993, he was tapped to star as Enzo Ferrari in the film Ferrari which was budgeted at $65 million (U.S.) and had Michael Mann attached as director. The project fell through.

He organised the first Tribeca Film Festival in May 2002. He intended to revitalise the Lower Manhattan area after September 11th attacks.

Has said that Meryl Streep is his favorite actress to work with.

He was voted as the best actor of all time at FilmFour.com (2002)

Inducted into the Italian-American Hall of Fame in 2002

British 80s pop group Bananarama (Siobhan Fahey, Sarah Dallen and Karen Woodward) had a song dedicated to De Niro called "Robert De Niro's Waiting". De Niro heard about it and arranged to meet the three girls. They got so nervous waiting for him that all three got drunk before he even arrived.

Diagnosed with prostate cancer, and expected to make a full recovery. [October 2003]

Owns a San Francisco restaurant called Rubicon with Francis Ford Coppola and Robin Williams.

Spent four months learning to speak the Sicilian dialect in order to play Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (1974). Nearly all the dialogue that his character spoke in the movie was in Sicilian.

Is often associated with Al Pacino, even though the two have only made two films together. However, neither film ("The Godfather Part II" and "Heat") features a single shot of De Niro and Pacino in frame together. It is commonly thought that the film "Heat" features such a frame, but it does not. There is a famous publicity still photo from the diner scene in "Heat" with De Niro sitting across from Pacino, but such a shot does not appear in the actual film. At no point are both actors onscreen at the same time.

When he was a child, he was an avid reader of playwrights.

According to a profile in Vanity Fair's annual Hollywood issue, is the first actor to do a method interpretation of a cartoon character as Fearless Leader in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000).

He started the whole "awards show ribbon" tradition by wearing a green ribbon on his lapel at the 1981 Academy Awards. The ribbon was in rememberance of several African-American children who were victims of a serial killer in Atlanta, Georgia in 1980-1981. The ribbon was given to him by a fan in the bleachers as he arrived; the victims' families had been wearing them for months.

He often plays Italian characters in films, despite the fact he is three quarters Irish.

Was in Ossining, New York (home of the infamous Sing Sing penitentiary) to shoot three different movies: Analyze This (1999), Analyze That (2002) and Hide and Seek (2005).

In the Egyptian film Medina, El (2000), the main actor Ali has a duck that he named De Niro after his favourite actor.

Was voted the Number 2 greatest movie star of all time in a Channel 4 (UK) poll, narrowly being beaten by Al Pacino.

It was tricky to make him look huge as Frankenstein's monster in _Frankenstein (1994) , considering that Kenneth Branagh, who played Dr. Frankenstein, is of similar height. Many of the tricks used to make humans, wizards, and elves dwarf the hobbits later on for "Lord of the Rings" trilogy were also employed to make De Niro appear much bigger than his co-stars, including using very large men as body doubles for shots where only the hands and feet are seen.

He was voted the 34th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Singer P.J. Harvey refers to De Niro in a song, "Reeling," from her album '4-Track Demos".

Finley Quaye mentions him in the song "Sunday Shining", I'm a hero like Robert De Niro...

Was unable to accept his first Oscar in 1975 due to filming committments to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976)

Was good friends with comedian John Belushi, who died of a drug overdose in 1982. He visited Belushi's apartment at 3:00 on the morning of his death but, according to eyewitnesses, left minutes later after seeing that Belushi was ill. Belushi had also been visited by Robin Williams less than an hour earlier, who also left straight away.

Ranked #1 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Greatest Living Actor (Gods Among Us)" list. [October 2004]

He and wife Grace Hightower renewed their wedding vows in November 2004. The couple's divorce, filed in 1999, was never finalized.

His Irish mother, despite having had a strict Catholic upbringing, was not a Christian and was a practicing Jew for most of Robert's childhood. His mostly Italian father, a painter, wasn't religious in any way.

At the age of 17, after leaving the movies with a friend, he unexpectedly stated that he was going to be a film actor. No one believed him until he dropped out of his senior year of high school and joined Stella Adler's acting school.

His father, after Robert was born, came out of the closet as a homosexual and eventually divorced Robert's mother.

His boyhood idols among actors included Montgomery Clift, Robert Mitchum, and Marlon Brando. He preferred the darker, more character-driven work of these men to the older stars of Hollywood for whom their public persona as a star was more important than their immersion into the character.

Rarely does interviews and is known as one of the most ultra-private celebrities. He was the subject of a late 90s interview (and cover photo) for Esquire magazine. Most of the article focused on how guarded he is with his personal life, what few details are known about him, what rumors are speculated while only a minority of the article dealt with the actual interview itself. The writer noted that while the interview was ultimately agreed upon, he was given a substantial list of off-limit subjects NOT to ask De Niro about. They included: politics, religion, his family, his reported interest in fine wines, and so on.

When they met shortly before making "Mean Streets," De Niro and Harvey Keitel became fast friends. De Niro was an Irish-Italian from the Village in Manhattan and was taught by Stella Adler and Keitel was a Jew from the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn and was mainly mentored by Lee Strasberg, but the two guarded actors bonded and remain close to this day.

He and Martin Scorsese were brought up blocks apart in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, but never formally meet when they were young. When introduced at a party in 1972, the two came to realize that they had seen each other many times but had never spoken.