Robert De Niro’s done it all from acting to business, and even dipped his toes in the political scene. In his early eighties he’s still curious, eager to try new things and share with us what is important in his life.
I’ve known Robert De Niro for twelve years now, and every interview with him is something to look forward to. But this year things have changed. Bob, as he likes to be called, has a more optimistic outlook on life — there’s something akin to muted joy in the air. When I meet him in downtown New York, he has just come back from doing promotions in London and at 81 years old he shows no signs of slowing down. This year alone he was in a movie, The Alto Knights, and a TV series, Zero Day, and he has a new resort opening in the Caribbean in early 2026. At this May’s Cannes Film Festival he received a lifetime achievement award and his acceptance speech made the headlines.
Although last year he was very heavily involved in Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, when we meet he has other, more personal, things on his mind. He’s opening a new resort with famous chef Nobu Matsuhisa in Barbuda in 2026 and is enthusiastic about sharing his love for his new baby daughter, Gia, who was born in 2023 to him and his girlfriend Tiffany Chen, a martial arts instructor. At the end of the interview, he asks me to come over to look at a very cute photo of his baby daughter and him taken near a swimming pool. From the smile on his face, it’s very clear what the most important new project in his life is now, and where his newfound joy comes from.
EARLY LIFE
Q: You grew up in the Little Italy neighbourhood of Manhattan, but you were only a quarter- Italian — your dad was half- — how did you see yourself? Did you identify as Italian-American? Did it change over time?
De Niro: Well, I identified more with the Italians. I spent a lot of time in this neighbourhood.
[De Niro approaches the window and gazes at the view of the neighbourhood from the 14th floor of The Bowery Hotel, where our interview took place.]
Q: So, the neighbourhood shaped your identity, and you didn’t question it too much?
De Niro: No, not really. I hung out here as a kid for three or four years. I was a teenager. It was just the way things were.
Q: Were you exposed to Italian food?
De Niro: Yes, at my grandparents’ house, my father’s parents. I love Italian food.
Q: Do you remember your first trip to Italy?
De Niro: I was eighteen. I hitchhiked all over Europe. I went up to Scotland, then to Ireland, then back down to England and France, and then to Italy.
I think in the public’s imagination, because you’ve played so many Italian or Italian- American characters, there’s this assumption that Robert De Niro equals Italian-American. But when you consider your family background, which is Irish, German and French, it’s more complex than that.
De Niro: I always identified with this part of the neighbourhood and the kids I grew up with. It’s funny because I was actually working on the movie The Alto Knights nearby where we are today. We were shooting just a few blocks from here. Recently, I was part of a documentary that Martin Scorsese was involved in, and it included two guys I grew up with. One of them was actually the inspiration for Johnny Boy, the character I played in Mean Streets.
Q: Were your parents okay with you dropping out of high school to study acting?
De Niro: It was okay with my mother. They were okay with it.
Q: But what if your own kids did that? Would you be all right?
De Niro: I wouldn’t be! But I like to think I support my kids. I never do certain things. I think they are all trying their best and I always support them.
You probably also worry about them …
De Niro: Of course. How can you not?
Q: Not many people know that one of the first parts you ever had in a movie was in a French film, Trois Chambres à Manhattan. I saw it recently — it’s just a few seconds. What do you remember about it and that time in the ’60s?
De Niro: I was an extra for a day. It was supposed to be a coffee shop on Lexington Avenue. What I found interesting was that, as an American, I could immediately spot things that felt European, like the espresso machine in the scene — that wouldn’t have been in an American coffee shop in New York City at the time. It was just a job. I was living in Paris at the time, and someone told me about it, so I went in as an extra. That was it. The film starred Maurice Ronet and Annie Girardot.
CAREER
Q: Can you tell us about your favourite Italian movies? Which famous actors and directors do you admire?
De Niro: When I was a young actor and became more aware of other types of movies, it was Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini. But maybe Fellini.
And who did Rocco and His Brothers?
Visconti.
De Niro: Great movie. I like Mastroianni, of course. There was the actor in Rocco and His Brothers, Renato Salvatori. I once ran into him in Rome. He was in his car, stuck in traffic, and I went up to him, said hello. He was very nice.
Q: You played in movies by Bertolucci, by Sergio Leone, and more recently you worked with Giovanni Veronesi [on The Ages of Love] — how does working with Italian directors compare with American ones?
De Niro: In my experience, Bertolucci was different from Sergio. They both have a certain lyricism, but when we were shooting 1900, we had an “old” sequence — where I played a very old version of myself. We shot it at the beginning of the movie, the first or second day of shooting. I did it, but this was very disconcerting because it should’ve been done at the end. We did redo it at the end, Gérard [Depardieu] and I. You don’t do this until you’re familiar with the character. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. Today, I could do it if there was a good reason to. But I was a younger actor — it was difficult.
I remember having a talk with Bernardo, and he was explaining how Europeans work, with an emphasis on “the feeling, the moment,” et cetera. In other words, the way you feel today is going to influence how you do things. You don’t know how you’re going to do the scene because you might feel one way today, and a different way tomorrow. He was right, but on the other hand, there are certain things you need to stick to, no matter how you’re feeling. In fact, I remember doing a scene not far from here in New York at the Whitney Museum, in an old movie called Greetings with an actor named Allen Garfield. I had never met him, we did an improv, the whole scene — he was great. I was feeling one way — not great. I was hoping it would be okay, I wasn’t sure … but in fact the scene was fine. You can be not feeling well but the scene can turn out fine. Like you and I are talking right now, you could have other things on your mind, as can I, besides what we’re talking about, but it doesn’t affect the interview. Same thing when you’re shooting a scene from a movie.
There’s no doubt that European films are different than American ones, but at the same time, Europeans love American movies. Maybe it’s because of their simplicity. I’m generalizing, of course. I was about twenty-four years old when I realized that you don’t always have to be right in your head for a scene to turn out fine. Just go with what you’re supposed to go with, with what your intentions are socially and interactively. Don’t get cluttered by other stuff. We all have issues in our own life, things on our mind.
European movies are more spontaneous, more of a “spur of the moment” type of process …
De Niro: Yes. Maybe Europeans have a bit of a more “naturalized” attitude, at least in certain movies.
Q: I wonder if, with time passing, you re-evaluate some of your own work. Are there movies you didn’t like for a long time and suddenly you think “Eh, actually, this one wasn’t that bad”?
De Niro: Well, I could have that feeling. I’m not thinking of a movie specifically that that happened, but it very well could have because I got some objectivity and I might be just switching channels and something pops up and I look at it and say “It’s good.” The one thing that I’ve always been wanting to do, and then as I get older, I don’t know if I have the time, is to look at all my movies starting from the first movie that I have done and then move it all the way to now, just go through everything all the way to the present, chronologically. And just go through and critique them for myself and maybe take notes or something. The idea is “Where can I go in a whole different direction from everything I’ve done so far?” But I never did that. It just became harder. I had a friend writer say, “Well, I’ll sit with you and we’ll go over it.” I said, “Let me see.” Actually doing it is another story.
That’s a very ambitious endeavour.
De Niro: It is, yes.
Q: You’re still working quite a bit. I’m wondering if your outlook has changed. Making films means a lot of waiting around. Are you more patient — are you still excited to be on set?
De Niro: In my situation I’m lucky, because I have a camper. I go into my camper, I work on a script, make calls, do some things, I’m always busy, so it’s not like I’m not using the time. I’m not standing around waiting. These days there are so many distractions. In the old days, you went in and were by yourself, you could read, you could listen to the radio — you could watch television if they had one in the camper. Now they have everything you can look at, so that you can always be occupied pretty easily. So no, for me, it’s not a problem. And then in a way, it’s good to be distracted from what you’re supposed to be doing unless it’s a scene you have to stay focused on and you can’t go off on this and that — you have to stay in the zone.
“I’M AN ACTOR. I DON’T FEEL THAT WAY. I DON’T FEEL THE WAY THOSE CHARACTERS DO – THAT’S NOT ME.”
Q: You’ve recently played people in positions of authority and power, like in Zero Day, Killers of the Flower Moon or The Alto Knights. Would you say that it’s very different to play a powerful hero or a powerful villain, or that there are commonalities in both?
De Niro: I don’t think of the William Hale character from Killers of the Flower Moon that way. He genuinely believed he was helping the Osage people while exploiting them, even though it’s a contradiction. He saw himself as a good citizen, even though he was doing terrible things. That’s what you got from everything that he put out there — that he felt he was a good person, he did a lot of good for the Osage. And he was always upbeat, seemed kind of a nice guy. And yet he was doing these horrible things. And some of the things I don’t understand — I don’t understand what his motivation was. But he could present himself as a good, upstanding citizen, saying he does these good things. Even after he was convicted and put in jail, he felt that the Osage still loved him in some way. I don’t know whether he really believed that or was just saying it or deluding himself. Maybe deep down he really knew that what he was doing was not good.
Q: In the Netflix series Zero Day, you play ex- President George Mullen. What kind of research did you do to build the character and backstory of President Mullen?
De Niro: I did this show because they had very good people involved with it — one of the writers, Eric Newman, who was the showrunner and the main writer, and Noah Oppenheim. And Mike Schmidt, who writes for the New York Times. They really know that world. When I met with Eric, I was telling my agent I just want to see if I can do something in New York for a while. And he said, “What about a limited series?” I think that’s how it went. Noah wrote a treatment and I read that. I said, “Looks good, looks good.” Then he wrote an episode and then maybe another episode a few weeks later, and then I said, “It’s good for me.”
All the technical consultants we had were the best. I felt pretty secure as far as all that goes. And with politicians, you see them talking all the time. You get a sense of how they talk from just listening to press conferences or interviews. There’s a certain nature of behaviour that they have in that position, understandably. Even though my character had not been president for 12 years and only for one term, he had a good reputation. He was well respected. And so that’s why the Angela Bassett character, President Mitchell, asked me to do this and be in charge.
Some people are going to be a little spooked because some of it was obviously done a year or more ago, but some of the things in it, it’s almost like the writers could tell the future: the one-term president (we didn’t know Biden would be one term a year ago), and then there’s a Black woman president, which almost happened. Mullen is also older and having memory problems at some point. It’s eerie!
De Niro: Totally coincidental, though. Interesting. Since he’s an older guy that could make sense, if you want to go into it. It’s a thriller, in a way.
It must have been a lot of work to put it together.
De Niro: It was like doing three movies, three features back-to-back. And I’ve said in several interviews that it felt like I was swimming the English Channel. I look towards France, I look behind me, I can’t see France, I look toward England, I can’t see England, and I can’t stay there. I gotta swim every day. I keep going.
I think there are some heavy currents in the Channel …
De Niro: There’s some heavy currents. And that’s another thing — the currents, too. And then somebody mentioned that you have to put a lot of grease on you, too, to stay warm! But the bottom line is it was just moving, moving — moving forward. Every day, I had some scene and had to work to stay abreast of everything, with all the dialogue scenes.
They could have made your character, George Mullen, a purely good guy. But there is that scene where he’s supervising the torture of this right-wing talk-show host. And then at that point you’re wondering if he’s such a good guy …
De Niro: Exactly — that’s one of the negative parts of the story, if you will. It shows what he feels he has to do because of the pressure that he’s under in order to discover he can’t find out anything. And then the “terrorists” threaten that another attack will happen again. My character’s under a lot of pressure. It doesn’t mean he’s justifying what he did, but that’s how he felt it should be.
Q: In your recent movie, The Alto Knights, one of the two characters you played, Vito Genovese, reminded me of a character Joe Pesci might have played. Did you see that, too? Did you play him with that intention?
De Niro: Yeah, sure. Joe would’ve been great in that kind of role. That was part of the challenge for me — to step into that kind of energy. My agent and producer, Irwin Winkler, pushed me to do both roles. I took a few days to consider it and then I thought, “Yeah, this could be interesting.”
PERSONAL
Q: Do you still visit Italy regularly?
De Niro: Yes, I like to go as much as I can. I was there last summer. I was on an island, the island of Ischia, near Naples. It was very nice. People were nice and very low-key. I was there on vacation with my girlfriend and our baby girl.
“I SUPPORT MY KIDS. I THINK THEY ARE ALL TRYING THEIR BEST, AND I ALWAYS SUPPORT THEM.”
Q: 2025 will be a big year for you, as you will be opening the Nobu Barbuda restaurant and Nobu Beach in Barbuda. Was it and is it a lot of work getting everything ready?
De Niro: It’ll open at the end of 2025, or more towards 2026. And we’re still figuring it out, but it’s really moving. Every year I go down to look at it or I get reports from everybody who goes down there, my partner and so on. It’ll be a lot different from existing Nobu properties. We have a Nobu restaurant already in there. It’s different — it’s on the beach, it’s very nice. It’s a different thing.
Q: Online I see some people saying “I love the actor, but I hate his politics.” It’s almost that they think you are the characters you play, and they think many of the Mafia guys, they would’ve been Trump supporters. But you haven’t changed. The characters an actor plays create expectations in people. Have you had, in your personal life, many times when you’ve had to say “I’m not that guy, I was just playing him in a movie”?
De Niro: Well, if somebody would say that, I can understand how people would think that those characters would go in that direction. But at the same time, personally, that’s not who I am. I am acting, I’m an actor. I don’t feel that way, I don’t feel the way those characters do. Even if you might think they would go in that direction, lean in that direction — that’s not me.
