It’s been almost a year since Robert De Niro welcomed his youngest daughter, Gia, with partner Tiffany Chen, and the actor has loved every moment spent with his little one.
“She’s such an adorable baby. So sweet,” De Niro, 80, gushed in an interview with People published on Wednesday, February 7. “[When I] look at her, everything else goes away. So it’s a great joy and relief to just be with her in the moment.”
De Niro announced in May 2023 that he had welcomed his seventh child, who was later revealed to have been born one month prior. In June 2023, the actor shared that his six older kids had yet to meet his and Chen’s baby, though that has since changed.
“The kids all get a big kick out of her,” De Niro said on Wednesday. “The grandkids even. She’s their aunt— [and] they’re about to be teenagers!”
De Niro shares kids Drena, 52, and Raphael, 46, with ex-wife Diahnne Abbott, twins Julian and Aaron, 28, with ex Toukie Smith, and kids Elliot, 25, and Helen, 12, with ex-wife Grace Hightower. He is also a grandfather to Raphael’s three children and Drena’s late son, Leandro, who died at age 19 in July 2023.
De Niro, who recently scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role in Killers of the Flower Moon, went on to note that he loves getting to spend time with all of his children. “The fact that they’d all be together is everything to me,” he told the outlet.
He added that being a father to a 10-month-old at age 80 has helped him learn to be “ready to take whatever life gives me.”
Not long after his and Chen’s baby news broke, De Niro revealed that his partner’s pregnancy was not an unexpected one. “How could you not plan that kind of thing?” he told Page Six in May 2023.
Gia made her TV debut during a July 2023 episode of CBS Mornings, during which Chen, 45, told host Gayle King that the baby has made her and De Niro’s lives “more fun.”
During the interview, Chen revealed that she suffered health complications following Gia’s birth, resulting in her losing facial function. Upon returning to the hospital, Chen was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a condition in which facial muscles experience temporary weakness.
De Niro previously praised Chen, whom he has been romantically linked to since 2021, for doing the “heavy lifting” when it comes to taking care of Gia. “I’m there, I support my girlfriend. But she does the work,” he told The Guardian in October 2023. “And we have help, which is so important.”
Last month, De Niro got emotional while discussing Gia in a video interview for AARP The Magazine. “It feels great,” he said of fatherhood. “Everything that I’m consumed with or worried about just goes away when I look at her. It’s wondrous.”
