Actor-director Robert De Niro has said
that it was likely his father was conflicted about being gay.
The 70-year-old De Niro discusses his
father in the upcoming HBO documentary Remembering the Artist:
Robert De Niro, Sr.
The senior De Niro, who died in 1993 in
New York at the age of 71, was an abstract expressionist painter of
the post-World War II era.
The film, which premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival, documents the life of the painter thorough
his son's eyes.
“Yeah, he probably was [conflicted
about being gay],” De
Niro told gay glossy Out, “being from that generation,
especially from a small town upstate. I was not aware, much, of it.
I wish we had spoken about it much more.”
He added that he was close to his
father.
“We were not the type of father and
son who played baseball together, as you can surmise. But we had a
connection. I wasn't with him a lot, because my mother and he were
separated and divorced,” De Niro said.
“As I say in the documentary, I
looked after him in certain ways. He was absent in some ways. He
was very loving. He adored me. … As I do my kids,” he added.
Remembering the Artist: Robert De
Niro, Sr. will debut on HBO June 9. (A trailer for the film is
embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)