Robert De Niro finally addressed why he wasn’t in attendance for his first-ever Oscar win.
“I didn’t think much about it,” De Niro, 81, admitted on the Tuesdsay, March 11, episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers.
De Niro received his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Don Vito Corleone in 1974’s The Godfather Part II. During his interview with late-night host Seth Meyers, he revealed that the reason he wasn’t in attendance was because he was busy filming a movie in Italy. In fact, he didn’t even find out he’d won the Oscar until the next morning.
“I was doing [1976 historical drama] 1900 with [director] Bernardo Bertolucci in Northern Italy. It’s nine hours later there so I got a call early in the morning that I had won the Academy Award,” he remembered.
When Meyers asked whether De Niro considered watching the Oscars on TV, he admitted, “I don’t know, in those days, whether you could watch it [in other countries] … I didn’t think that I was going to win.”
De Niro remembered having a very brief and casual phone call with someone in the U.S. where he thanked the caller for informing him about the career-defining moment. He was the only Best Supporting Actor nominee missing on Oscar night when Ryan O’Neal and his daughter Tatum O’Neal announced the category winner.
The Godfather Part II director Francis Ford Coppola – who won Best Director and Best Picture that night – was called up to the stage to accept the award on De Niro’s behalf.
Robert De Niro during an interview with Seth Meyers during ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers’ on March 11, 2025. Lloyd Bishop/NBC
“I think this is a very richly-deserved award,” Coppola told viewers. “I think Robert De Niro is an extraordinary actor and he is going to enrich the films that are made for years to come.”
De Niro won his second Oscar six years later, this time for Best Actor, in recognition of playing down-and-out boxer Jake LaMotta in director Martin Scorsese‘s 1980 sports drama Raging Bull. De Niro was in attendance on Oscar night to personally accept the trophy for the second time around.
“I want to thank my mother and father for having me, and my grandfather and grandmother for having them,” he joked, before declaring: “I love everyone!”
De Niro has received nine total Oscar nominations throughout his acclaimed career, most recently getting a Best Supporting Actor nod in 2024 for portraying Oklahoma crime boss William King Hale in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Elsewhere, the actor recently offered some behind-the-scenes insight on another of his classic roles, when he confirmed to Live with Kelly and Mark in February that his unforgettable “Are you taking to me?” scene from Taxi Driver was partially improvised.
“Some of the best stuff, not always, is when it’s improvised,” he revealed in the interview.
There have been notable instances of Hollywood stars snubbing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) at the Oscars – most notably Marlon Brando sending Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather to deliver a statement of protest on his behalf when he won Best Actor for The Godfather in 1973.
