Robert De Niro Shares Heartbreaking News About His Ex-Wife

Legendary actor Robert De Niro is currently embroiled in a story that sounds like it could’ve come right out of one of his movies. There’s a massive amount of money at stake for a start. But this isn’t another gangster flick – it’s a divorce. De Niro is splitting from his wife Grace Hightower, and recently things got ugly.

Unhappily married

Some might say the relationship was clearly doomed from the start. Because De Niro was actually already married when he first met Hightower at a restaurant in 1987. He was the husband of actress and singer Diahnne Abbott back then – but allegedly he had a string of extramarital affairs.

A tangled web

Hightower had no idea who De Niro was back then, which is quite a thing to admit. But she was definitely about to find out. In those days the actor was a headline-grabber thanks to his many relationships. After divorcing Abbott in 1988, he went into a long-term relationship with model Toukie Smith and had twins with her. Only after splitting from her, too, did he find love with Hightower.

Easing in

Even though she was with a world-famous celebrity, Hightower managed to keep the details of her personal life fairly quiet. One of the only interviews she gave about De Niro was for The New York Times newspaper in 2013, and all she said was, “It was an ease-in. It wasn’t a whirlwind [romance].”

Tying the knot

In 1996 De Niro proposed to Hightower with a reported $100,000 engagement ring, and the following year they were married. And it was a quiet ceremony but a star-studded one – Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel were among the guests. There were rumors even then, however, that not all was well.

A pre-nuptial agreement

Some of De Niro’s friends didn’t like Hightower, you see, and therefore didn’t attend the wedding, according to a Daily Mail article published in 2021. These unnamed people even advised him against marrying her in the first place. There’s no way of confirming that – but we do know De Niro and Hightower had signed a prenup.

Having a baby

De Niro and Hightower’s first child together, a boy named Elliot, came along in 1998. Unfortunately the relationship appeared to deteriorate quickly after that. In the summer of 1999 De Niro filed for divorce, and this would be round one between the ultra-rich husband and wife. It got messy fast.

The tension builds

 The quarrelling couple signed an initial agreement regarding money and childcare, according to media sources. De Niro could visit his young son three times a week, as long as Hightower got a nanny or representative to accompany him. The actor’s spokesman, however, never confirmed or denied this was true.

Claims of bad behavior

Both sides soon made some nasty allegations during the custody battle for Elliot. Hightower claimed that De Niro was exposing their son to a wild and dangerous Hollywood lifestyle. De Niro, on the other hand, claimed that Hightower had a jealous streak which prevented him from even talking to other women. 

Insiders get involved

Various people who knew the couple expressed their shock to People magazine in September 2001, as the battle dragged on. One anonymous person said the split came as such as surprise because “[Hightower] was always talking about how great [De Niro] was and how much they loved the baby.”

Hope and happiness

Yet despite all the heartache and mud-slinging, there seemed to be some hope of reconciliation for the couple. Hightower’s film producer friend Betsy Rathe told People, “She wants happiness for her son, first and foremost. She wants Robert to be happy too.” And that did indeed happen… for a while.

The second try

By 2004 De Niro and Hightower appeared to have all made up. The divorce hadn’t been finalized, so they were free to renew their vows. And stars such as Meryl Streep, Ben Stiller and Martin Scorsese attended the ceremony, as well as two judges. De Niro apparently joked to his guests, “They can make sure this one sticks.”

A second baby

And things did indeed seem to improve from there. In 2011 the couple had another child, a daughter named Helen through a surrogate. De Niro seemed to enjoy being a parent – but it was parenting that would suddenly put the couple under a spotlight in the next few years.

A big controversy

In 2016 De Niro revealed that his and Hightower’s son Elliot had autism. But this revelation only came about because De Niro was screening a movie at his own-founded Tribeca Film Festival called Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. This repeated the debunked claim that vaccines were a cause of autism. He was slammed in the media for this.

Parenting Elliot

De Niro’s later statements on the matter seemed to indicate that he was divided on the issue while Hightower perhaps wasn’t so much. He told The Today Show that year, “There are many people who say they saw their kid change overnight. My wife says that [is what happened to Elliot]. I don’t remember.”

Elliot’s achievements

Hightower and De Niro worked hard to provide Elliot with everything he needed. The young man became an accomplished tennis player who’s even featured in a video for the Special Olympics. During that period De Niro and Hightower seemed unbreakable – but then in 2018 came the announcement they had split.

Celebrity gossip

There were unconfirmed rumors at first. An anonymous source told Page Six magazine on November 20, “De Niro and Grace are breaking up. He’s been at a few things since the very end of the summer without her – and rumor has it they are done.” And an unnamed “pal” claimed, “They are not living together at this time.”

De Niro’s statement

But later that week De Niro gave a statement to People which read, “Grace and I have two beautiful children together. We are entering a period of transition in our relationship which is a difficult but constructive process. I honor Grace as a wonderful mother and ask for privacy and respect from all as we proceed to develop our roles as partners in parenting.”

Who was to blame?

There was instantly speculation about what had happened to drive the two apart after over twenty years of marriage. Some thought it was because the two had incompatible political opinions, while others claimed that the breakup was all Hightower’s fault because she’d been overly controlling of her husband.

Micromanaging

An apparent friend of De Niro’s spilled the beans to Radar Online in December 2018. The insider claimed, “She busted his balls and controlled his finances and film production company, and had all kinds of rules he couldn’t live by. Grace micromanaged him to death and he deserves a medal for sticking it out so long.”‬

Respectability

The anonymous source went on, “With both their names on so many charitable projects, she wanted him to look respectable in the public eye, and that meant shaving regularly and getting a proper haircut… and not hanging out with pals like Marty Scorsese, Leo DiCaprio, Harvey Keitel, and Keith Richards.”

Moving on

De Niro also had to “call [Hightower] from the set twice a day like he was reporting to duty,” claimed the Radar Online source. They concluded, “To her credit she took on a lot of the responsibilities, but a huge festering problem was that he wasn’t able to be himself. Now she’s moving on and it’s eased up a lot of the stress and tension between them.”‬

Unhappy valentines

There was still the stress and tension of the custody battle to come, though. In 2020 Hightower and De Niro reached a deal regarding custody of eight-year-old Helen – and submitted it on Valentine’s Day. The media’s been kept in the dark about what the pact entails, but we do know one of Hightower’s lawyers was heard shouting, “The man [De Niro] is worth a billion dollars!”

Huge sums of money

That all sounds messy… but it was about to get messier. In 2021 some scandalous questions were raised in the divorce court about De Niro’s money and just how much of it Hightower had been spending. Bear in mind that De Niro’s net worth is a reported whopping $500 million. But could even that disappear quickly?

Money issues

In April of that year lawyers for the estranged couple went up against each other in court. And De Niro’s attorney Caroline Krauss made a surprising claim: De Niro was running out of money. She said the pandemic and a massive income tax bill had had a terrible effect on his finances – and Hightower was also to blame.

Doing it for the money

Krauss claimed that De Niro was taking movie roles at this point more to pay his bills than anything else. During a virtual court hearing she told the judge, “Mr. De Niro is 77 years old, and while he loves his craft, he should not be forced to work at this pace because he has to.” So why was he working so much and so late in his career?

Recent success

There’s no denying that De Niro is getting older. Action movies are probably behind him, and many of his contemporaries are enjoying retirement or semi-retirement now. He has had some big hits recently though, including 2019’s Joker, a movie he reportedly loved the script for, since it was influenced by some of his older movies.

Getting the paycheck

But there have been some critical disasters for the acting legend in recent years, too. When the De Niro-starring family comedy The War with Grandpa came out in 2020, film critic Christy Lemire wrote of it, “No one needs a paycheck this badly.” But unfortunately perhaps De Niro actually did.

Overloaded

Caroline Krauss told the court, “When does that stop? When does he get the opportunity to not take every project that comes along and not work six-day weeks, 12-hour days so he can keep pace with Ms. Hightower’s thirst for [clothes designer] Stella McCartney?” It was a clear, effective slam against De Niro’s estranged wife. Were her spending habits really that bad? Could De Niro even be heading for bankruptcy? 

A second fortune

Let’s not forget that Hightower has money of her own, too. She’s been a philanthropist as well as a singer and actress. And in 2012 she founded a Fair Trade coffee company called Grace Hightower and Coffees of Rwanda, to help improve the lives of farmers in Rwanda.

Charity work

Hightower spoke to The New York Times newspaper about the new enterprise in 2013. She talked about her life, how she had been brought up in poverty and wanted to give back. She also said regarding money: “I’m not the type of person that could take someone else’s funds and take a chance with them.” So were the claims about her spending habits true?

The status quo

Well, Hightower’s lawyer Kevin McDonough said De Niro had been decreasing the amount of money he owed to Hightower, and had reduced her monthly credit card limit from $375,000 to $100,000. She needed that money, he said, to “maintain the status quo” of her lifestyle.

The million-dollar diamond

Yet some big claims were made about just how much money Hightower had been spending. Kraus said, for example, that Hightower had blown through $1.67 million in 2019 alone, with much of that going on a single diamond from the jeweler Kwiat. That purchase apparently cost her, and thus De Niro, a whopping $1.2 million. Ouch!

Private jets

But Hightower’s lawyer McDonough denied his client had ever spent that much on a diamond. He added, “There have been no cutbacks and no slowdowns in Mr. De Niro’s lifestyle whatsoever,” and that, “When Mr. De Niro goes to brunch Sunday in Connecticut, he charters a helicopter up there. When he flies down to see his friends in Florida or wherever else, it’s a private jet.”

Revenge allegations

McDonough indeed seemed determined to win the case. During proceedings in 2020, at the height of that year’s lockdown, McDonough commented on De Niro’s $500 million net worth and claimed, “Mr. De Niro has used the COVID pandemic, my words would be, to stick it to his wife financially.”

Wasting money

An insider spoke to the Daily Mail in April 2021 about De Niro’s attitude to money. According to them, “He fritters it away. His accountant used to tear his hair out.” And they added, “Matrimonial disputes are usually more about anger than money. [Hightower] feels scorned and she’s never been successful in her own right.”

Extraordinary amounts

The judge who’s been listening to both sides of the row is Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper. And he’s seemingly not too impressed about the squabbles over money. During the April 2021 hearing he said, “There is nothing ordinary about these expenses. For 99.9999% of the world, these are extraordinary to an almost unimaginable degree.”

The final word

Judge Cooper went on, “I want to get these parties divorced. I want to get Ms. Hightower and Mr. De Niro to go their separate ways. They will still come out of this richer than almost any human being who walks this earth.” And well, it’s hard to argue with him about that.

Back in the dating game

The divorce between De Niro and Hightower hasn’t gone through yet, but it seems like there’s no hope of a last-minute reconciliation on this occasion. Because De Niro notably spent his 78th birthday with another woman, martial arts instructor Tiffany Chen. He and her had worked together on De Niro’s film The Intern.

What the future holds

So it remains to be seen exactly what will happen as this high-profile divorce drags on. Clearly it’s far from amicable at the moment, and there may even be more dramatic accusations to come. And as many media outlets have pointed out, this whole thing may not end well for De Niro’s dinero.