YOU TALKIN TO ME?

Robert De Niro Opens Up About His Gay Father, Wishes He’d Done It Sooner

Screen Shot 2014-05-28 at 11.26.14 AMWell, one thing we likely wouldn’t have if the gay rights movement had happened fifty years earlier is Robert De Niro. So that’s something.

The legendary actor opens up about memories of his late NYC-based gay artist father in a a new documentary, Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr.

He told Out magazine:

“It was my responsibility to make a documentary about him. I was always planning on doing it, but never did. Then Jane Rosenthal, my partner at Tribeca [Enterprises], said, “We should start doing that now.” It was not intended to be on HBO. It was just something I wanted to do.”

De Niro Sr. grew up in a small upstate New York town and was conflicted with his sexuality his whole life, something De Niro Jr. wasn’t aware of until it was too late to talk to his dad about.

“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.

Again, for my kids, I want them to stop and take a moment and realize that you sometimes have to do things now instead of later, because later may be 20 years from now—and that’s too late.”

The documentary follows his dad’s life while drawing comparisons to how drastically times have changed for gays in America. It includes intimate scenes like De Niro Jr. reading from his dad’s diary which details his struggles coping with his sexuality.

It’s also interesting to note that De Niro keeps his dad’s SoHo studio preserved to this day as a way of honoring his father.

“It was the only way to keep his being, his existence alive,’ De Niro said. ‘To me, he was always a great artist.”

Look for it on HBO on June 9th.

via Gay Star News

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