Robert De Niro has opened up about becoming a father for the eighth time.
The Killers Of The Flower Moon star and his girlfriend Tiffany Chen welcomed Gia, their first child together, last April.
- READ MORE: ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ review: Martin Scorsese’s heartbreaking true crime chiller
“It feels great,” the eighty-year-old actor told AARP: The Magazine. Adding of his nine-month-old daughter, he said: “Everything that I’m consumed with or worried about just goes away when I look at her. It’s wondrous.
“When she gets older — who knows? But that very sweet way she has of looking at you, taking you in, thinking and watching and observing … ” De Niro added, teary-eyed.
De Niro is nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon. In the Western epic, he plays William King Hale, the real-life political figure from Osage County, Oklahoma, who orchestrated dozens of Osage Indian murders in order to obtain their oil money.
In other news, De Niro’s company, Canal Productions, was recently ordered to pay more than $1.2 million to Graham Chase Robinson, the actor’s long-time personal assistant, after it was found to have engaged in gender discrimination.
However, De Niro himself was found to be not personally liable for the abuse. This followed a two-week trial in New York City, where De Niro denied all claims of being an abusive employer.
Robinson, 41, brought claims against De Niro after she quit the job in 2019 following disagreements with De Niro’s then girlfriend, Chen. She sued De Niro for $12 million claiming reputational harm and severe emotional distress.
Robinson claimed that between 2009 and 2019 she was called names, made to carry out demeaning tasks and has experienced difficulty securing another job after the Killers Of The Flower Moon star refused to write her a reference
When De Niro, 80, testified, he told jurors that he tripled Robinson’s annual salary to $300,000, elevated her title and said that she took advantage of her access to his finances, reportedly stealing about $85,000 in air miles from him, according to Sky News.
While the star denied yelling at his assistant and dismissed her claims as “nonsense,” he admitted he berated her, and admitted that he “could have” called her a “brat,” but maintains that he was “never abusive, ever”.
De Niro’s lawyers sued Robinson for breaching loyalty and fiduciary duty, before this lawsuit was filed against him in 2019, seeking $6 million, including the return of 5 million airline miles.
According to The New York Times, after five hours of deliberations, the jury of seven reached a unanimous decision that Robinson was not liable for the claims brought against her by Canal.