Robert De Niro Makes a Rare Public Appearance With Partner Tiffany Chen Before Revealing the Origin of Taxi Driver's Most Famous Line

Robert De Niro, 82, attended the Chanel Tribeca Festival Artists Dinner in New York on Monday alongside his partner Tiffany Chen, 46, in one of the couple's increasingly uncommon public outings. The pair arrived hand in hand at the annual event, which drew a range of figures from film and the arts. Chen, a martial arts instructor who first met De Niro on the set of The Intern in 2015, wore an asymmetric one-shoulder dress by Lebanese designer Dima Ayad. De Niro co-ordinated in a black jacket and grey dress shirt.

The couple welcomed their daughter Gia in April 2023, De Niro's seventh child. He has spoken candidly in interviews about parenthood at his age, acknowledging that his partner carries the greater share of the daily demands, and that having support around them has been essential. The family are understood to live on his New York estate, a six-bedroom property he has owned since 1997. Other guests at the Chanel dinner included Katie Holmes, director Sofia Coppola, and Camila Morrone. De Niro also took the opportunity to pay tribute to Tribeca Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal during the evening.

Also Read: Supergirl's Final Trailer Is Here — And DC Studios' Darkest Hero Yet Is About to Change Everything

A Milestone Screening for Taxi Driver

Earlier in the week, De Niro had appeared at the Tribeca Festival's 50th anniversary screening of Taxi Driver, joining director Martin Scorsese, screenwriter Paul Schrader, and co-star Jodie Foster for a Q&A. The conversation produced one of the more interesting revelations to emerge from the festival: De Niro confirmed that the film's most celebrated line — the mirror monologue in which Travis Bickle addresses an imagined antagonist — was his own improvisation rather than scripted dialogue. The moment has since become one of the most quoted sequences in cinema history, though its precise origins had long remained a point of discussion among film scholars and enthusiasts.

De Niro reflected on the film's continued resonance with characteristic restraint. He suggested the themes of isolation and disconnection that run through Taxi Driver feel as relevant now as they did in 1976, particularly in the context of what he described as the intensifying solitude that the internet and the pandemic years have brought to many people's lives. He stopped short of drawing direct parallels to any specific contemporary circumstances, but the observation was pointed enough to require little elaboration.

The Film's Origins, Recalled by Its Makers

Paul Schrader, who wrote the screenplay, described composing the script during a period of profound personal difficulty — recovering from a stress-related illness brought on by loneliness — and settling on the image of a taxicab as a vessel that sealed its occupant in isolation from the city around it. Scorsese recalled reading the script for the first time and finding it viscerally affecting from the opening pages. Jodie Foster, who was twelve years old during production, spoke about the challenge of the material and reflected on how the film's central character was constructed to resist simple interpretation — a man whose worldview is presented to the audience without being explained or resolved.

A Figure Who Remains Consistently Engaged

De Niro co-founded the Tribeca Festival in 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, with the aim of contributing to the cultural and economic recovery of lower Manhattan. His continued involvement in the event, now in its twenty-fourth year, reflects an ongoing commitment to the institution he helped establish. The week's activities — a public appearance with Chen and a substantive panel discussion about one of the defining works of his career — offered a relatively rare glimpse into a figure who has kept an increasingly low profile in recent years, and who at 82 shows little sign of withdrawing from the work that has defined his public life.

For audiences who grew up with De Niro's performances in film and television, the confirmation of his authorship of Taxi Driver's most iconic line is the kind of detail that settles a longstanding question — and adds another layer to one of the most discussed moments in American cinema.