De Niro opens up about his gay father

Robert De Niro has been an indelible presence on the big screen for more than 40 years. He has been nominated for Oscars seven times and won twice.

In 1976's "Taxi Driver," De Niro plays troubled veteran Travis Bickle, who takes a job as a late-night cabbie and hates what he sees.

Robert De Niro poses for a portrait in 1973, the year his breakthrough movie, "Mean Streets," was released.

De Niro performs a scene in "The Godfather Part II" in 1974 in New York. The actor won his first Oscar, for best supporting actor, for his performance as the young Vito Corleone.

De Niro has worked frequently with director Martin Scorsese, left. Here, Scorsese, De Niro and Jodie Foster present "Taxi Driver" at Cannes in 1976. The film won the top prize, the Palme d'Or, at the festival.

De Niro plays a soldier in 1978's "The Deer Hunter." The film won the Oscar for best picture.

For his role as Jake LaMotta in 1980's "Raging Bull" -- directed by Scorsese -- De Niro gained 60 pounds.

His performance in "Raging Bull" won De Niro best actor at the Academy Awards.

In 1990's "Goodfellas," another collaboration with Scorsese, De Niro plays Jimmy Conway, a New York gangster. The film also stars Joe Pesci, left, and Ray Liotta, center.

De Niro and Scorsese remade the chilling "Cape Fear" in 1991. De Niro plays Max Cady, who stalks a family after being released from prison.

Scorsese, left, and De Niro have a laugh at a news conference to promote the 1995 movie "Casino." The film marked their eighth collaboration.

In "Casino," De Niro plays a Mafia-controlled executive who finds trouble while managing a Las Vegas gaming palace.

De Niro has showed his lighter side on occasion. In 2000 he appeared on "Saturday Night Live's" "Weekend Update" segment with Jimmy Fallon.

President Bill Clinton and De Niro goof around at a fundraiser on Hillary Clinton's birthday at New York's Roseland Ballroom in 2000.

De Niro, a born-and-bred New Yorker, appears with Leonardo DiCaprio at "The Concert for New York City" after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Billy Crystal, left, dressed as a turkey, sits on a bench with De Niro, dressed as a pilgrim, during the filming of a Thanksgiving-themed "I Love New York" commercial in 2001.

De Niro played a depressed gangster in two comedies with Crystal, 1999's "Analyze This" and 2002's "Analyze That."

In 2003, Scorsese presents De Niro with the American Film Institute's 31st lifetime achievement award.

De Niro plays a straight-arrow ex-CIA officer in the "Meet the Parents" films. Here, he has a scene with Dustin Hoffman in 2004's "Meet the Fockers."

De Niro received another Oscar nomination for his performance in 2012's "Silver Linings Playbook," in which he plays the obsessive-compulsive father of Bradley Cooper, right.

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• Robert De Niro has produced a new documentary about his father, an artist


• Robert De Niro Sr. was gay and private about his sexuality


• De Niro honors his father broadly, shows off his studio, reads from his diaries


• "You can't hide anything," says the actor

(CNN) -- Robert De Niro says it was his "responsibility" to make a documentary about his father, artist Robert De Niro Sr., he told Out magazine in an interview.

De Niro's father was a gay man who divorced De Niro's mother when the actor was a child. The elder De Niro is the subject of a new documentary, "Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr.," which premieres on HBO June 9. (HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Time Warner.)

In a chat with Out, De Niro says that though he and his father weren't close -- he grew up with his mother -- the senior De Niro had a profound influence on his actor son. De Niro wants to pay tribute in the documentary, partly for the sake of his own children.

Robert De Niro at an exhibit of his father's works in 2005. De Niro Sr. is now the subject of a film by his son.

"We were not the type of father and son who played baseball together, as you can surmise. But we had a connection," he said. "I wasn't with him a lot, because my mother and he were separated and divorced. ... But my father wasn't a bad father, or absent. He was absent in some ways. He was very loving. He adored me ... as I do my kids."

De Niro Sr. was an abstract expressionist painter who was part of an art community that also produced Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning and Mark Rothko. As his son notes, when De Niro Sr. had his studio in downtown Manhattan, an area now full of multimillion-dollar apartments, the area was "Siberia." De Niro Sr. died in 1993 and his son has maintained his studio in New York's SoHo neighborhood ever since.

"This space is here, and in 20 years, people won't know what a real space like this will be unless it was in a museum and they recreated it," he said. He had the contents catalogued and has kept them intact.

He says he was only dimly aware of his father's sexuality growing up.

"I was not aware, much, of it. I wish we had spoken about it much more. My mother didn't want to talk about things in general, and you're not interested when you're a certain age," he said.

But both his father and mother gave him the drive to succeed, he added.

"When I was young, I wasn't afraid of being told 'No,'" he said. "I tell my kids, I tell everyone, 'If you don't go, you never know.' I didn't take it as rejection. Certain things are stacked against you. You're coming out of nowhere, starting out — that's part of the excitement of it in a way, too."

In the film, De Niro also reads from his father's diaries, which he's still working through, he said. He may share more of them publicly -- "That's part of his legacy, too," he said -- though he wants to talk to others first.

But the important thing, he said, is getting the whole story out.

"You can't hide anything. That's the whole point -- the truth. That's what people are attracted to," the actor said. "I should have done this 10 years earlier, but I'm glad I did it now."

Same-sex parents, a proud secret

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