- In De Niro: A Life, film writer Shawn Levy offers rare insight into the actor
- At height of fame life spiralled into cocaine abuse and womanising
- Preferred relationships to have no strings so he could see other women
- Had flings with Uma Thurman, Whitney Houston and Naomi Campbell
He is
famous for inhabiting his screen roles so completely that they come
alive in a way few actors can match. But Robert De Niro, who actually
became a New York cabbie before playing one in Taxi Driver, remains an
enigma himself.
The
star is so notoriously sphinx-like about his private life that even
co-stars have admitted they haven’t a clue what he is really like.
Now, an exhaustive biography has claimed that De Niro’s obsessive secretiveness may cover more than his natural shyness.
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At the height of his fame his life spiralled into cocaine abuse (Pictured with Uma Thurman in Mad Dog And Glory in 1993)
At
the height of his fame — when he had conquered showbusiness with films
such as Raging Bull and The Deer Hunter — his life spiralled into
cocaine abuse and a friendship with comedian John Belushi that had
tragic consequences.
In
De Niro: A Life, film writer Shawn Levy also reveals new details about
the actor’s compulsive womanising and sometimes high-handed treatment of
the black women he chose to seduce, including claims that he pressured
one of them to have an abortion.
He
may not have appeared in a truly great film for more than 20 years, but
De Niro is still spoken of with awe by movie buffs who recall his glory
years in the Seventies and Eighties.
This
was an actor so perfectionist that he learnt a Sicilian dialect to play
mobster Vito Corleone for The Godfather II, and put on 70lb and took up
boxing for his Oscar-winning role as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull.
Although
biographer Levy is star-struck by De Niro’s brooding performances, he
admits the actor could be thin-skinned, quick-tempered and focused on
his career above all else.
Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980). He won Best Actor for the performance at the Oscars
The actor plays Travis Bickle in 1976 movie Taxi Driver - a film which also starred actress Cybill Shepherd
Socially,
he was something of a cold fish. When his first marriage, to actress
Diahnne Abbott, effectively ended in separation in 1979, he publicly
blamed the pressures of celebrity. But Levy says that afterwards he
pursued the bachelor life with ‘single-minded purpose’.
According
to Levy, De Niro became more publicity-averse, partly because
‘increasingly he was living a lifestyle that he was keen never to have
revealed’.
Raised
in a bohemian home in New York’s Greenwich Village, the driven De Niro
had had no time for Sixties hippy drug culture. But the following
decade, along with many in Hollywood, he indulged heavily in cocaine.
A
shared love of the white powder lay behind his unlikely friendship with
comic actor John Belushi, says Levy. The intense, bottled-up actor and
the madcap comedian would regularly carouse the night away in Los
Angeles and New York.
In
February 1982, both were staying at the Chateau Marmont hotel in LA.
Belushi’s drug abuse was so severe he was snorting heroin. At 3am one
morning, after a night of excess with Robin Williams — who killed
himself three months ago — De Niro turned up at Belushi’s bungalow in
the hotel grounds.
De Niro prefered his relationships to have no strings, so he could see other women. Pictured above with Toukie Smith
There,
Levy claims, he ‘let himself in, helped himself to a little bit of the
cocaine displayed on a table, and left again’, saying barely a word to
Belushi. When the hotel manager told him the next day that Belushi had
died hours later from an accidental drug overdose, De Niro cried.
The
actor was even more ‘horrified’ because the tragedy had a terrible
twist. Belushi had wanted to play a rock star in his next film and
planned to imitate De Niro’s technique of immersing himself in a role,
says Levy. This would involve him injecting himself with real heroin.
After
Belushi’s death, a mutual friend named Richard Bear allegedly reminded
De Niro that he had heard the two actors discussing the idea only days
earlier.
Investigators
later found the death to be due to a deadly cocktail of heroin and
cocaine, called a speedball, administered by a female friend of Belushi.
De
Niro’s sex life was also messy in those heady years, Levy recounts.
After he split from Diahnne, Hollywood gossip was that he was involved
with the actress Bette Midler in the early Eighties, when she was
unmarried. There were plenty more.
One
relationship that came back to haunt him was with Helena Springs, a
stunning black singer. She recalls how De Niro followed her in his car
through Los Angeles one day and asked her out for lunch.
He may not have appeared in a truly
great film for more than 20 years, but De Niro is still spoken of with
awe by movie buffs who recall his glory years in the Seventies and
Eighties
The new biography contains several accusations of De Niro (pictured left in 1990 movie Goodfellas) bullying women
De
Niro prefered his relationships to have no strings, so he could see
other women, and this is how his affair with Springs continued for
several years.
Springs
has claimed she aborted her first pregnancy without telling him but,
when it happened again in 1981, she said she decided she would have the
child. De Niro was not happy. There followed ‘what she described as a
series of ugly and intimidating conversations and encounters aimed at
getting her to terminate the pregnancy’, says Levy.
After
she gave birth to a daughter, Nina, De Niro gave her $50,000 but
refused to provide his medical history or a blood sample, fearing she
would use these to extract more money.
Ten years later Springs sued him for child support and De Niro did submit to a blood test, which showed he wasn’t the father.
The
new biography contains other accusations of De Niro bullying women.
Actress Cybill Shepherd starred with him in the 1976 drama Taxi Driver
and said there was ‘enormous chemistry’ between them. But when he asked
her out, she turned him down.
According to film director Peter Bogdanovich, Shepherd’s boyfriend at the time, De Niro then made her life hell on set.
If
De Niro was famously inarticulate in interviews, he had no trouble
chatting up women. His ‘type’ was black, bosomy, slender-waisted and
very pretty. He would often chase women in his car, accost them at
public events and even see them on TV or in print, then contact them
through third parties.
His
girlfriends in the Eighties included a Page Three girl from South
London named Gillian de Terville. In the Nineties he started seeing
supermodel Naomi Campbell (then barely 20 years old) after she split up
with boxer Mike Tyson. They broke up several times but kept reuniting.
In
the 1990s he also had ‘dalliances’ with singer Whitney Houston and
model Veronica Webb, and occasional dates with his co-star Uma Thurman,
writes Levy.
A woman who outlasted many in the actor’s attentions was a vivacious New York model named Toukie Smith.
She
and De Niro had twin sons together — born by surrogate — in 1995, but
never married. The actor’s affections instead switched to Grace
Hightower, a model and former flight attendant, and they wed in 1997.
De Niro learnt a Sicilian dialect to play mobster Vito Corleone (pictured) for The Godfather II
De Niro poses with his current wife Grace Hightower who he married in 1997
De
Niro’s name continued to attract salacious headlines, though. In 1998,
he was questioned by police in Paris over possible involvement in a
high-class prostitution ring. One of the girls, an English porn star,
told police she’d had a relationship with De Niro. He didn’t deny it,
but insisted he had never paid for her company — which prosecutors
accepted.
Though De Niro is still married to Grace Hightower, it has been a tempestuous partnership.
Some have blamed De Niro’s failure to establish stable relationships with the opposite sex on him seeing his mother do the same.
She
left De Niro’s father — a renowned expressionist painter, who was
bisexual — after just two years’ marriage, and her son watched with
dismay as she went through a string of short-lived boyfriends.
He
was an only child, and Levy believes it was the loneliness of those
years — raised among adults with, often, no playmates — that helps to
explain the secretive and guarded man he became. It may also explain why
he became such a driven and brilliant actor.
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