On Monday evening in New York Metropolis, Robert De Niro sought refuge from a tropical downpour beneath a crimson tent surrounded by flowers exterior of Balthazar, the French bistro in SoHo.

His olive inexperienced polo shirt and relaxed black blazer speckled by raindrops, the actor had arrived on the restaurant on June 12 for the annual Chanel and Tribeca Competition Artists Dinner, an occasion honoring 10 artists who contributed authentic works to the competition’s award-winning filmmakers. The dinner, now in its sixteenth yr, is all the time a starry occasion—and 2023’s lineup was no completely different. Iman, Oscar Isaac, Katie Holmes, Ayo Edebiri, Camila Morrone, Dominique Fishback, Tracee Ellis Ross, Darren Aronofsky, and extra hit the step and repeat beneath the tent earlier than ducking inside to dine on seafood towers of shrimp and lobster. Inside Balthazar’s signature crimson cubicles, Zazie Beetz took selfies with Nina Dobrev, Morrone eliminated a tightly tied black leather-based trench to disclose a tube gown beneath, Sofia Coppola chatted with Suki Waterhouse, and Tommy Dorfman hobnobbed with Dianna Agron. Stephanie Hsu—whose All the things In all places All at As soon as follow-up, Pleasure Trip, involves theaters in July—donned an ’80s-inspired, black, puffy bomber jacket that she described as a “deep-cut, actually cool, hip, fashionable piece.”

However the man of the hour was, with out query, De Niro himself—who, together with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, launched the Tribeca Competition in 2001 to spur the financial and cultural revitalization of downtown Manhattan following 9/11. The About My Father star has had fairly a yr, what with welcoming his seventh baby; reuniting with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio for Killers of the Flower Moon, which premiered to a 9-minute standing ovation at Cannes; and an eightieth birthday on deck in August. He’s additionally the topic of a three-day occasion known as De Niro Con, a competition created particularly for followers who’d wish to binge the actor’s iconic movies, go to re-creations of his movie units, and attend panel discussions all about Bob. Did De Niro, a notoriously shy actor who tends to keep away from speaking about himself an excessive amount of, discover the thought of a complete conference surrounding his life and profession a bit daunting?

“I hoped that it wasn’t going to be an embarrassing factor for me,” he stated of his first ideas when he heard De Niro Con would, certainly, be a factor. “I wasn’t in opposition to it, and I don’t know if I’m into it, however it regarded fascinating. So I stated, OK, let me see. And that’s the place I’m with it now.”

Though De Niro has eight initiatives at present within the works, essentially the most talked-about movie he’s part of is inarguably Killers of the Flower Moon, based mostly on the ebook by David Grann. Within the film, De Niro performs William Hale reverse DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart; the 2 actors haven’t labored collectively on a full-length function movie since 1993’s This Boy’s Life. Nonetheless, De Niro’s admiration for DiCaprio’s dedication to his craft persists.

“Leo is absolutely great within the film,” De Niro stated. “He’s a really delicate individual, a really delicate younger man—effectively, a ‘younger man’ to me. And he reveals that in his efficiency. He was very involved—as Marty was, and I used to be too—about, the one phrase I can consider is titrating, or regulating the efficiency and what he was doing, particularly when it comes to the relation to his [fictional wife, Mollie Burkhart, played by Lily Gladstone]. So it was sort of an advanced function. And I feel he did an incredible job.”

De Niro and Scorsese’s historical past making movies collectively stretches many years, all the way in which again to Imply Streets in 1973. However it’s the pair’s 1980 movie, Raging Bull, that’s been the topic of a lot dialog on-line, after eagle-eyed followers unearthed photographs of the director and actor engaged on the script in Sint Maarten—whereas carrying sombreros and wielding frozen drinks.

“I noticed that,” De Niro stated of the tweet. “We have been simply collectively sooner or later after we we’d been working, and I stated, ‘Marty, let’s go have a drink someplace and we’ll take an image with mai tais, the same old Caribbean celebratory drinks.’ And that was it.”

The acclaimed actor tends to maintain his solutions politely succinct (when requested whether or not he’s discovered a narrative he’d think about growing into a movie as a writer-director, De Niro stated: “No. If it got here, I might do it. However not at this level.”). The identical goes for his outlook on fatherhood, which is taking over a brand new form in De Niro’s late 70s. However he insists the wisest factor anybody’s ever advised him about life on the whole may additionally apply to being a dad: “If I solely knew then what I do know now.”