De Niro was born in Greenwich Village, New York City, to Robert De Niro Sr., an abstract expressionist painter, and Virginia Admiral, also a painter and poet. His parents separated when he was two, and he was raised primarily by his mother in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and Little Italy neighborhoods, giving him early exposure to the working-class Italian-American communities he would later portray on screen. He dropped out of high school to study acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory and later under Lee Strasberg.

De Niro’s breakthrough came through his collaboration with director Martin Scorsese, beginning with Mean Streets (1973). That same year, his performance in Bang the Drum Slowly drew wide critical notice, and in 1974 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II. His intense, transformative performance as Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) cemented his reputation as one of the defining actors of the New Hollywood era.

Photo: Josh Jensen via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

De Niro won his second Academy Award, for Best Actor, for his physically transformative performance in Raging Bull (1980), and went on to star in a string of Scorsese films now considered classics, including Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), and The Irishman (2019). He also built commercial success with lighter fare, including the Meet the Parents franchise and Analyze This, and continued taking prestige roles into his eighties, including Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).

De Niro’s acting income in recent years comes from a mix of major studio and streaming projects, including his continued work with Scorsese, alongside recurring franchise paydays. His restaurant and hospitality businesses, particularly Nobu, are reported to contribute substantially to his annual income as well, giving him a more diversified earnings base than most actors of his generation.

Across his career, De Niro’s per-film fees have varied enormously depending on the project, from modest art-house salaries early on to multi-million-dollar paydays for studio comedies like the Meet the Parents films. His deal for The Irishman, a Netflix production with an unusually large budget partly attributed to its de-aging visual effects, was reported to include a substantial salary reflecting his lead role and decades-long association with Scorsese.

De Niro has taken relatively few traditional brand endorsement deals compared to his level of fame, generally preferring to keep his commercial activity centered on his own restaurant and hotel businesses rather than third-party advertising. What endorsement work he has done has typically been smaller in scale relative to his film and business income.

De Niro co-founded Nobu, the international sushi restaurant and hotel chain, in 1994 alongside chef Nobu Matsuhisa and producer Meir Teper, an investment that has since expanded into dozens of restaurants and hotels worldwide and become one of the most successful celebrity-backed hospitality brands. He also co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, originally created to help revitalize lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks, and owns significant real estate in the Tribeca neighborhood, including the Greenwich Hotel.

De Niro has extensive real estate holdings concentrated in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, an area he has been closely associated with developing commercially for decades, including ownership interests in the Greenwich Hotel. His restaurant and hotel investments through Nobu also represent a significant, income-generating asset base beyond traditional real estate.