Biography Early life De Niro was born in New York on August 17, 1943, the son of Virginia Admiral, a painter, and Robert De Niro, Sr., an abstract expressionist painter and sculptor. De Niro's fathery was of Italian-Irish descent, and his mother was a Presbyterian-raised atheist of English, German, Dutch, and French descent. His Italian great-grandparents emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of Campobasso, Molise, and his paternal grandmother, Helen O'Reilly, was the daughter of Edward O'Reilly, an emigrant from Ireland. De Niro's parents, who had met at the painting classes of Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts, divorced when he was two years old. De Niro grew up in the Little Italy area of Manhattan. His childhood nickname was "Bobby Milk," due to his pale complexion in his youth. De Niro first attended the Little Red School House and was then enrolled by his mother at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art in New York, a divi...