Featured Image Credit: ABC/Instagram/@nooralfallah
Topics: Robert De Niro, Celebrity, Parenting
Katherine Sidnell
Topics: Robert De Niro, Celebrity, Parenting
Robert De Niro has responded to Al Pacino becoming a father again, aged 83.
It will be the Scarface star's fourth child, with De Niro also recently revealing that he’s welcomed another child at the age of 79.
Despite the happy news, it’s resulted in some very public backlash for the veteran actors with one columnist dubbing the pair ‘selfish’.
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It comes after the Taxi Driver star made the admission during an interview with ET Canada discussing his new film, About My Father.
Understandably, the conversation turned to parenting with De Niro correcting the interviewer when they said he had six children.
“Seven actually,” the 79-year-old pointedly told them. “I just had a baby."
Not long after this, Pacino also confirmed that he would become a father for the fourth time at 83, with his 29-year-old girlfriend Noor Alfallah.
The Godfather actor currently has three children - his eldest is daughter Julie, 33, and 22-year-old twins, Anton and Olivia.
The news has sparked intense debate with many pointing out that Pacino will be 101 when his youngest child will turn 18.
It caused a backlash against both Pacino and De Niro, with journalist Jaci Stephen calling the men ‘selfish’ in her column for the Daily Mail.
“In contrast to the gushing celebrations from De Niro's celeb pals, I found the whole thing rather creepy - and not a little bit sad,” she wrote. “… The hard reality for geriatric dads like De Niro, and now Pacino, is that they'll barely live long enough to be remembered by their new babies.”
While others may have reacted negatively to the news, De Niro has congratulated Pacino saying that he was ‘very happy’ for his Irishman co-star.
De Niro made the comment when he appeared on the Today show on Thursday (1 June).
“He’s a few years older than me,” he joked. “God bless him.”
When asked about becoming a father at his ‘stage’, De Niro revealed that he had a ‘certain awareness’ about parenting in his seventies.
“When you’re older, you have awareness of certain things in life, dynamics. Everything, family dynamics,” he told viewers. “You can’t avoid learning certain things and then how you can deal with those, manage them and this and that.”
During the talk show segment, the veteran actor was then gifted an orange Today show onsie for his newborn, Gia.
The actor also has six other children, Drena, 51, Raphael, 46, 27-year-old twins Julian and Aaron, Elliot, 25 and Helen, 11.