Robert De Niro Trivia
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58 free Robert De Niro trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Robert De Niro trivia quiz covers six decades of transformation. It opens with the boy called Bobby Milk in Little Italy, the painter parents, the Cowardly Lion at age ten, and the classes with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. Then it works through the films that made him: Bang the Drum Slowly, Mean Streets and the start of the Scorsese partnership, the Sicilian-language Oscar for young Vito Corleone, the 30 pounds lost for Taxi Driver and the 60 gained for Raging Bull, The Deer Hunter, The King of Comedy, Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Casino and the diner scene in Heat. A second strand covers the later career and the man himself: A Bronx Tale and The Good Shepherd as director, Meet the Parents and the comedy turn, Silver Linings Playbook, Joker, The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon, TriBeCa Productions and the Tribeca Film Festival, Nobu, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Honorary Palme d'Or, the seven children, and the roles he turned down, from Jesus to Jack Torrance. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese quizzes next.
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Q 01What was the profession of both of Robert De Niro's parents?
Painters
Painters both, they were Greenwich Village artists who split when he was a toddler; decades later De Niro hung his father's big canvases on the walls of his own Manhattan restaurant.
Q 02What childhood nickname did De Niro earn for his pale complexion?
Bobby Milk
Bobby Milk was what the street kids of his Manhattan neighbourhood called the pale, sickly-looking teenager, who ran with a fairly tame local crew long before he played mobsters on screen.
Q 03De Niro's stage debut at age 10 was as which character in The Wizard of Oz?
The Cowardly Lion
The Cowardly Lion was an apt first part for a shy, sickly-looking boy, who found that performing was what eased his shyness.
Q 04De Niro was introduced to the Stanislavski system at the New York conservatory of which acting teacher?
Stella Adler
Stella Adler had studied with Stanislavski himself in 1934 and came home teaching actors to build a role from imagination, not just their own memories; Marlon Brando was another of her students.
Q 05Which director cast De Niro in Greetings and Hi, Mom! before he ever worked with Scorsese?
Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma had already filmed him in 1963 for The Wedding Party, but it sat unreleased until 1969, so De Niro's first screen role reached cinemas after Greetings.
Q 06De Niro's breakthrough role in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) was a terminally ill player of which sport?
Baseball
Baseball was new to him: De Niro had never played, so he drilled constantly and studied real ballplayers to pass as a big-league catcher, and the part first got him widely noticed.
Q 07What was the name of De Niro's small-time hood in Mean Streets (1973)?
Johnny Boy
Johnny Boy began his long partnership with Martin Scorsese, who let De Niro and Harvey Keitel improvise whole scenes, including their rambling talk behind the bar.
Q 08For The Godfather Part II, De Niro delivered most of his lines in what?
Sicilian dialects
Sicilian dialects carry nearly all his dialogue, with only a few lines in English, so the New York-born actor spent weeks studying the language before the cameras rolled.
Q 09De Niro and Marlon Brando were the first pair of actors to win Oscars for playing which same character?
Vito Corleone
Vito Corleone won Oscars for both men, and neither was there to collect: Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his, and De Niro was away working, so Coppola accepted for him.
Q 10Which actress was 12 when she played Iris opposite De Niro in Taxi Driver, earning an Oscar nomination?
Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster had to pass a psychiatrist's assessment before she was allowed to take the role, a check that so dark a part would not harm a child of 12.
Q 11Which Taxi Driver line did De Niro improvise?
You talkin' to me?
'You talkin' to me?' was De Niro's own invention on set, and in one telling he borrowed it from Bruce Springsteen's banter with a concert crowd.
Q 12In Bertolucci's 1900 (1976), De Niro's landowner Alfredo grows up alongside a peasant played by whom?
Gerard Depardieu
Gerard Depardieu's peasant Olmo and De Niro's landowner Alfredo grow up as close friends, then drift apart as one champions the workers and the other inherits the estate while fascism rises.
Q 13De Niro's studio boss in The Last Tycoon (1976) came from the unfinished last novel of which author?
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Q 21In Midnight Run (1988), De Niro played bounty hunter Jack Walsh opposite which comic foil?
Charles Grodin
Charles Grodin plays the mob accountant he must drag from New York to Los Angeles; De Niro's turn to comedy had nearly come in Big, where he was offered the lead that went to Tom Hanks.
Q 22Who played Jesus in Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), a part De Niro had turned down?
Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe won the part after Scorsese saw him in Platoon; an earlier attempt at the film in 1983, with Aidan Quinn cast as Jesus, had collapsed when Paramount pulled out.
Q 23Goodfellas was adapted from which non-fiction book by Nicholas Pileggi?
Wiseguy
F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940 with the novel unfinished, having modelled its hero on the MGM producer Irving Thalberg; Elia Kazan filmed it and never directed again.
Q 14Which instrument did De Niro learn from Georgie Auld for New York, New York (1977)?
Saxophone
Saxophone lessons came from Georgie Auld, a veteran of Benny Goodman's band who also plays a bandleader in the film; the sound is Auld's own playing, with De Niro miming every note.
Q 15The Deer Hunter (1978) follows steelworkers from Clairton, a mill town in which state?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's real steel town of Clairton gave the film its setting, and De Niro prepared by drinking, eating and playing pool with mill workers, though he was refused a shift in the mill.
Q 16De Niro piled on some 60 pounds mid-production to play which boxing champion's bloated retirement?
Jake LaMotta
Jake LaMotta coached De Niro himself and judged him good enough to turn professional; filming then paused while the actor ate his way through France to play the champion gone to seed.
Q 17What was the name of De Niro's struggling stand-up comedian in The King of Comedy (1982)?
Rupert Pupkin
Rupert Pupkin was De Niro's own find: he bought the script and took it to Scorsese, who at first turned it down, and the finished film recouped barely $2.5 million of its $19 million budget.
Q 18Which Italian director cast De Niro as a Jewish gangster in his final film, Once Upon a Time in America?
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone's cut of nearly four hours premiered at Cannes, but his American distributor trimmed more than an hour from it and put the story in chronological order over his objections; he never directed again.
Q 19Which Terry Gilliam dystopia features De Niro as Tuttle, a renegade heating engineer?
Brazil
Brazil sat unreleased in America while Universal's boss pressed for a happy ending; Terry Gilliam answered with a Variety advert asking when it would come out, and the studio gave way after Los Angeles critics named it best picture.
Q 20In Angel Heart (1987), De Niro played a character with which devilishly punning name?
Louis Cyphre
Louis Cyphre, said aloud, is Lucifer: the director wanted De Niro for the detective lead, but the actor asked for the Devil's cameo instead and grew his hair and beard long to play it.
Wiseguy told the true story of mobster Henry Hill, but the film could not keep the name: a television crime drama was already called Wiseguy, so Scorsese's picture became Goodfellas.
Q 24Awakenings (1990), with De Niro as a catatonic patient, was based on a book by which neurologist?
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks is the model for the film's Dr Sayer, played by Robin Williams, while De Niro had to master the tics and frozen postures of the patients Sacks had treated.
Q 25What was the name of De Niro's vengeful ex-convict in Cape Fear (1991)?
Max Cady
Max Cady's menace was earned the hard way: De Niro packed on muscle and paid a dentist to grind his teeth down, then paid far more to have them repaired once filming was over.
Q 26De Niro's directorial debut, A Bronx Tale (1993), was based on a play by which co-star?
Chazz Palminteri
Chazz Palminteri had turned down offers of up to $1 million for his one-man show because he insisted on writing the script and playing its neighbourhood mob boss; De Niro agreed to both.
Q 27In the 1995 Vegas film with Stone and Pesci, what was De Niro's Sam Rothstein nicknamed?
Ace
Ace was modelled on a real Chicago sports bettor known as 'Lefty', who ran four Las Vegas gaming houses for the mob and, like his screen double, walked away from a car bomb.
Q 28Which actor first shared a scene with De Niro in Heat (1995), though both had starred in The Godfather Part II?
Al Pacino
Al Pacino and De Niro never met in the Godfather sequel because their stories run decades apart; in Heat they finally face each other over coffee in a Los Angeles diner.
Q 29In which 1996 drama did De Niro play a priest to four boys abused in a detention centre?
Sleepers
Sleepers cast him as the neighbourhood priest who, once he learns what the guards did, lies under oath to hand two of the grown boys an alibi for murder.
Q 30In Wag the Dog (1997), De Niro's spin doctor and Hoffman's producer fake a war in which country?
Albania
Albania's fake war soon looked prophetic: a month after the film opened the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke, and when US missiles hit Sudan that summer the press reached for the film's title.