Just in time for Father’s Day, Robert De Niro is losing his tough exterior for a revealing new HBO documentary about his late father, Robert De Niro Sr. — a struggling artist who was also openly gay.
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In an emotional Out magazine interview, De Niro opened up about his father’s legacy and the responsibility he feels to tell the elder De Niro’s story in the most honest way possible. “I felt I had to. I felt obligated. It was my responsibility to make a documentary about him,” the Academy Award winner says. “It was not intended to be on HBO. It was just something I wanted to do.” Originally, De Niro intended simply to make the film for his own kids, using archival footage from the ’70s with the help of Martin Scorsese’s editor Thelma Schoonmaker.
Though De Niro’s parents divorced when he was only three years old, his father still lived within walking distance of him in the Greenwich Village.
