The 70-year-old actor has chronicled the life of his artist father in a documentary called "Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr", where he made the revelation, reported People magazine.
"Yeah, he probably was (conflicted about being gay), being from that generation, especially from a small town upstate. I was not aware, much, of it. I wish we had spoken about it much more," De Niro said.
"My mother didn't want to talk about things in general, and you're not interested when you're a certain age," he added.
"We were not the type of father and son who played baseball together, as you can surmise. But we had a connection. I wasn't with him a lot, because my mother and he were separated and divorced," he said.
"As I say in the documentary, I looked after him in certain ways. He was absent in some ways. He was very loving. He adored me... As I do my kids," he added.
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