page_title: Robert De Niro
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Robert De Niro / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama with Kennedy Center Honorees in the Blue Room of the White House, Dec. 6, 2009. From left; First Lady Michelle Obama, Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro, Bruce Springsteen, and President Barack Obama.
context_page_description: Robert Anthony De Niro Jr. is an American actor, producer, and director who holds both American and Italian citizenship. He is particularly known for his collaborations with filmmaker Martin Scorsese. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2009, he received the Kennedy Center Honor. In 2016, he received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama.
  Born in Manhattan in New York City, De Niro studied acting at HB Studio, Stella Adler Conservatory, and Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. His first major onscreen appearance was in Greetings. He soon gained recognition with his role as a Major League Baseball player in the sports drama Bang the Drum Slowly. His first collaboration with Scorsese was in Mean Streets, in which he played the small-time criminal "Johnny Boy". Stardom followed soon after with his role as the young Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II, which won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
context_section_description: In 1998, De Niro lobbied U.S. Congress against impeaching President Bill Clinton. While promoting the film The Good Shepherd  in December 2006, De Niro appeared on the show Hardball with Chris Matthews, where he voiced support for two Democrats. "Well, I think of two people: Hillary Clinton and Obama". On February 4, 2008, De Niro supported Barack Obama at a rally at the Izod Center in New Jersey before Super Tuesday.
  De Niro is an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, De Niro called Trump "blatantly stupid" and said, "He wants to punch people in the face?! I'd like to punch him in the face." This was in reference to the similar desire Trump expressed towards protesters at one of his rallies. On June 10, 2018, while introducing Bruce Springsteen to the stage at the 72nd Tony Awards, De Niro denounced Trump by saying, "I'm gonna say one thing. Fuck Trump. It's no longer 'down with Trump'. It's 'fuck Trump'." De Niro opined Trump as a racist, and admits that he was "naive" about Obama's two election wins and their implication of a post-racial America: "I felt we were on a new thing. I didn't realize how against him certain people were – racially against him, offended that he was there." In December 2019, De Niro clarified his views again on Trump and his family in an interview with The New York Times: "He is a person who, to me, has no morals, no ethics, no sense of right and wrong, is a dirty player. He has not one speck of redeemability in him. The president is supposed to set an example of trying to do the right thing. [...] There's not one thing that I see in him or his family, not any redeeming qualities. They're out on the take. It's like a gangster family." In 2020, he criticized the Trump administration and defended himself, saying, "As a citizen, I have as much right as anybody ― an actor, an athlete, a musician, anybody else ― to voice my opinion, if I have a bigger voice because of my situation, I am going to use it whenever I see a blatant abuse of power."
  De Niro endorsed Democrat Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 U.S presidential election, and switched to endorsing Joe Biden after Buttigieg dropped out of the race.
caption: De Niro with Michelle Obama, Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry, Bruce Springsteen, and Barack Obama in December 2009
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