In an interview for the February/March 2024 issue of AARP The Magazine, actor Robert De Niro, 80, expressed his deep affection for his youngest child, nine-month-old Gia Virginia Chen-De Niro, whom he shares with his partner, Tiffany Chen.
De Niro, who rarely discusses his family, shared that looking at his daughter Gia makes everything else in his life fade away, describing the experience as “wondrous.” He acknowledged the impact of Gia’s sweet and observant nature on him and how she has the ability to make worries disappear.
It’s great,” De Niro said about being a parent again at 80.
“Everything that I’m consumed with or worried about just goes away when I look at her. It’s wondrous,” he continued.
“When she gets older — who knows? But that very sweet way she has of looking at you, taking you in, thinking and watching and observing …” added the actor, growing teary-eyed.
The “Killers of the Flower Moon” star, who is dad to seven children, doesn’t sugarcoat how tough it is to be a dad.
“It doesn’t get easier,” he told The Guardian on Oct. 15, 2023. “It is what it is. It’s OK. I mean, I don’t do the heavy lifting.”
The Hollywood legend, who was 28 when became a dad for the first time in 1971, said Chen is a far more hands-on parent than he is. “I’m there, I support my girlfriend,” the actor explained. “But she does the work. And we have help, which is so important.”
De Niro told the publication that he enjoys “all” aspects of fatherhood.
“With a baby it’s different to with my 11-year-old. My adult children. My grandchildren. It’s all different,” he shared.
His “it is what it is” statement echoes a famous line of De Niro’s in the 2019 Martin Scorsese film “The Irishman”
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