Who

Considered by many to be the finest actor of his generation, De Niro's also a quintessential New Yorker and he owns about half of Tribeca to prove it.

Backstory

Raised in Little Italy by parents who were both painters, De Niro dropped out of school at 13 and joined a local street gang before turning to acting, studying under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio. He was 16 when he joined a touring repertory company; he went on to spent more than a decade performing in off-Broadway shows and dinner theater productions before winning his first film role in Brian de Palma's The Wedding Party in 1969. His big break came in 1973 when he played a street thug in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets opposite Harvey Keitel. A year later, his performance as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II earned him his first Oscar. Since then he's appeared in over 50 films, starring as psychotic cabbie Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, the mild-mannered but ruthless gangster Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas, and Al Capone in The Untouchables. He's also branched out into comedy with 1988's Midnight Run and as Ben Stiller's father-in-law-to-be in Meet the Parents and its sequel, Meet the Fockers, and established himself as a leading film producer. In 1989, he founded Tribeca Productions with partner Jane Rosenthal; together they've produced more than a dozen films, including many of the pictures in which he's starred over the past decade and a half.

Not every film, of course, has been a box office smash. The live-action adaptation of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle was a dead fish at box offices in 2000, and critics savaged 2003's ill-advised Analyze That. Nevertheless, few actors working today have mastered such a broad range of roles or earned such critical respect, and De Niro continues to reel in fat paychecks—he commands up to $20 million a role—even as he approaches retirement age. In 2006, he directed The Good Shepherd starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. In 2008, he'll team up with Al Pacino and 50 Cent in the action flick Righteous Kill.

On the side

De Niro has been just as busy off-screen over the past two decades. With producing partner Rosenthal and her husband, Craig Hatkoff, in 2002 De Niro founded the Tribeca Film Festival as part of a bid to revive downtown Manhattan. (Unfortunately for his wallet, the yearly festival has proved a chronic money-loser.) He's also a major force in Tribeca real estate and dining with a 30 percent stake in Drew Nieporent's Tribeca sushi temple Nobu (he owns a piece of the dozen or so other Nobu outposts across the globe, too) and a stake in Nieporent's Tribeca Grill, as well as several condo buildings on Hudson Street. In 2008, he moved into the hotel industry with the opening of his boutique Greenwich Hotel, which houses an NYC offshoot of Ago, the LA-based restaurant chain that De Niro invested in a decade ago with Harvey Weinstein and director Ridley Scott. De Niro's Tribeca hegemony hasn't pleased everyone in the hood. Some area residents have started referring to Greenwich Street, the epicenter of his holdings, as "Bobby Row."

Personal

De Niro's first marriage was to Taxi Driver actress Dianne Abbott. They had a son, Raphael, and divorced in 1988 after 12 years. (Raphael is now a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman and works with his dad on real estate ventures in Tribeca.) He had a long-term relationship with actress and restaurateur Toukie Smith, and the two had twin boys, Julian Henry and Aaron Kendrick, via a surrogate in 1996. De Niro later became the "true love" of cell phone shot-putter Naomi Campbell before finally marrying Grace Hightower in 1997. They have a son together, Elliott, and have separated and reconciled numerous times, with De Niro filing for divorce in 1998 and again in 2000. In 2004, after De Niro was diagnosed with prostate cancer, they renewed their vows and are still married—for now, at least.

Habitat

In late 2006, the real estate-loving actor dropped $20.9 million on a 15-room duplex co-op on Central Park West owned by Harvey Weinstein's ex-wife, Eve; Hightower congratulated De Niro on the purchase by gifting him a $328,000 Rolls Royce. At about the same time, the De Niros also bought a three-story limestone townhouse on 89th Street for $3.44 million, which Grace is renovating. They have a weekend house in the Catskills.