Robert De Niro biography

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Actor. Robert De Niro was born August 17, 1943 in New York City. His parents were both respected artists who had met while attending Hans Hoffman's famed Provincetown painting classes. His mother, Virginia Admiral, was a cerebral and gifted painter, a Berkeley graduate who made a significant name for herself in the 1940s and 1950s New York art scene. His father, Robert De Niro Sr., was a painter, sculptor and poet whose work received high critical acclaim. Known as the "golden couple" of the New York art circle, Admiral and Robert Sr. nevertheless split ways in 1945, when young Robert was only two years old. As his father remained singularly devoted to his art, De Niro was raised primarily by his mother, who took on work as a typesetter and printer in order to support her son.

A bright and energetic child, Robert De Niro was incredibly fond of attending movies with his father when they spent time together. He was especially taken with the films of the Swedish film star Greta Garbo. De Niro's mother worked part time as a typist and copyeditor for Maria Picator's Dramatic Workshop, and as part of her compensation De Niro was allowed to take children's acting classes for free. At the age of ten, he made his stage debut as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz; soon after, he earned a scholarship to the prestigious private High School of Music and Art. However, feeling overwhelmed and unprepared for the intense and competitive atmosphere, he dropped out to attend public school after only a few days. De Niro proved uninterested in school and as a teenager he joined a rather tame Italian street gang that gave him the nickname "Bobby Milk" in reference to his pale complexion. While De Niro was by all accounts only a very modest troublemaker, the gang provided him with ample experience to skillfully portray Italian mobsters as an actor.

In 1960, after a soul searching cross-country trip to visit relatives in California, De Niro decided to drop out of high school to study acting. Asked in an interview why he decided to take up the profession, De Niro responded, "Acting is a cheap way to do things that you would never dare to do yourself." He enrolled in Stella Adler's acting conservatory, and although he continued to take high school classes at night, he never graduated. Stella Adler was a strong proponent of the Stanislavski method of acting, involving deep psychological character investigation. An intense teacher, Adler was once described by the New York Times as someone who would "curse, cajole, rage, roar, and from time to time even compliment her students." Adler, who had taught the likes of Marlon Brando