More than 100 films, two Oscars... Robert De Niro, Hollywood's sacred monster at Cannes

Considered one of the greatest actors in the history of Hollywood, Robert De Niro is set to receive an honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes on Tuesday, May 13. A two-time Oscar winner before he even turned 40, he remains tirelessly devoted to the seventh art. The 81-year-old actor was nominated for an Oscar in 2024 for his supporting role in Killers of the Flower Moon , his tenth collaboration with director Martin Scorsese. And this year, he stars in Zero Day , a Netflix series in which he plays a former US president investigating a devastating cyberattack, and in The Alto Knights , in which he plays two mobsters fighting over control of New York.

" With his internalized acting that surfaces in the gentleness of a smile or the hardness of a look, Robert De Niro has become a cinematic legend ," the festival's website emphasizes in a message announcing this distinction. His first collaboration with Martin Scorsese dates back to 1973, for Mean Streets , and would forge his entire career. In the process, he became the favorite actor of the "New Hollywood," the generation of Coppola and Cimino, who dynamited studio cinema to breathe fresh air into it with auteur cinema.

In 1974, he played the young mafia boss Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II , which earned him his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Two years later, Scorsese offered him a role as a psychopathic taxi driver in Taxi Driver, for the first of his five Best Actor Oscar nominations. He confirmed his status as a performance prodigy and immortalized the line "You talkin' to me?", rehearsed in front of the mirror, one of the most famous scenes in the cinematic world. An improvisation, he would later say. Scorsese also led him to his second Oscar, in 1981, with Raging Bull, in which the actor gained 30 kilos to play the role of boxer Jake LaMotta.

His friendship with the director would produce many other great cinematic moments: New York, New York (1977), The Puppet Waltz (1983), Goodfellas (1990), The Deer Hunter (1991), Casino (1995) and The Irishman (2019). The actor also appeared with Michael Cimino ( The Deer Hunter ), Bernardo Bertolucci ( 1900 ), Sergio Leone ( Once Upon a Time in America ), Roland Joffé ( The Mission ), Brian de Palma ( The Untouchables ) and Michael Mann ( Heat ).

Born on August 17, 1943, in New York City's Little Italy neighborhood, Robert Anthony De Niro Jr. grew up under the watchful eye of immigrant parents, both painters. His bohemian childhood led him to theater at the age of 16, and then to film. Over the course of his exceptional career, he acquired the status of an " untouchable " of the seventh art for the quality, commitment, and intensity of his performances. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, the actor founded the Tribeca Independent Film Festival, a Manhattan neighborhood, to revitalize his city. He devoted enormous energy to it.

In the cinema, he continued to act extensively but was less demanding in his choices, multiplying in the 2000s the appearances in productions panned by critics like Law & Order in 2008, where he reunited with Al Pacino once again, after "Heat". His filmography also began to include more comedies, from Mafia Blues to the series of films Meet the Father.

Willingly taciturn, the actor has long avoided interviews, disliking journalists and liking nothing more than to answer a long question with a simple "yes" or "no." After more than 100 feature films, this New Yorker has loosened up a little with age, realizing that time is now running out. In 2023, he had his seventh child at the age of 79.