American actor Robert De Niro has revealed details about his new baby, after news broke earlier this week that he is a father again at age 79.
He told host Gayle King of CBS Mornings that his youngest child, his seventh, is a girl named Gia Virginia Chen-De Niro, a few days after promoting his new movie About My Father on the American news programme. She was born on April 6 and weighed 3.8kg.
The baby’s mother, Tiffany Chen, is a martial arts instructor and De Niro’s girlfriend. The two are “over the moon about this little girl”, according to King, who added that the child was planned and “brought here by love”.
De Niro shared with CBS Mornings the first official photo of Gia, which also appeared on the show’s Twitter account.
While neither De Niro nor Chen have publicly commented on their relationship, they have been spotted together many times. In 2021, they were seen holding hands and kissing while holidaying in the south of France.
In March 2023, they were photographed leaving a restaurant together in Santa Monica. A source told People magazine that the couple live together in Los Angeles.
They apparently first met in 2015 on the set of the movie The Intern (2015), where Chen played a taiji instructor who helps De Niro’s character.
Chen, who is believed to be in her mid-40s, is the daughter of William C.C. Chen, a China-born taiji practitioner who now lives in the US. According to a since-removed biography of her on her father’s website, she was inducted into Inside Kung-Fu magazine’s Hall of Fame as Competitor of the Year by the age of 26. She took up ballet, hula dance, swimming and gymnastics at age five and figure skating at age eight.
She starred in the instructional DVD, Step-by-Step Tai Chi With Tiffany Chen (2008), where she demonstrated basic moves to people of all fitness and experience levels.
De Niro has two children with his first wife, actress Diahnne Abbott, whom he was married to from 1976 to 1988. His son Raphael, 46, is a real estate broker and former actor, while actress-filmmaker Drena, 51, is Abbott’s daughter from a previous relationship who was adopted by De Niro.
He has another two sons – 27-year-old twins Julian and Aaron – with model Toukie Smith, whom he dated in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
He also has son Elliot, 24, and daughter Helen, 11, with his second wife, socialite Grace Hightower. The couple were married from 1997 to 2018. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network
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