Airyn De Niro says father Robert De Niro offered to attend her gender-affirming care appointments

Airyn De Niro, the transgender daughter of two-time Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro, has revealed how her father’s support helped her to accept her identity.

Speaking exclusively to PinkNews, Airyn revealed how she came out to her famous family, and explained how her father offered to go with her to access gender-affirming hormones.

“The first time I came out, it was on my Instagram,” she shared. “I actually had sent a text message to my older sister Drena, my twin brother Julian, and two of our cousins. I said in the text, ‘Hey, I’m going on estrogen, so if you see me with tits, you know what the T is, don’t be surprised’.”

Her cousins and siblings were “very supportive” of her decision to transition, and she went on to post the text she sent them onto her private Instagram account, so all her friends and family knew of her transition.

“With my dad, he’s like, ‘If you want to live your life as a woman, that’s fine.’ There’s no problem with it. He’s a very much live and let live guy,” Airyn said.

“He even offered to go with me to appointments and stuff when I was first starting the hormones. He was just like, ‘Just make sure you watch over your health and you’re going to somebody who knows what they’re doing.’ He’s very big on the health and safety of his family.”

After Airyn publicly came out as a trans woman in an interview with Them last month, the Taxi Driver and Killers of the Flower Moon actor stated that he will always “love and support” her.

“I loved and supported Aaron as my son, and now I love and support Airyn as my daughter. I don’t know what the big deal is, I love all my children,” he said in a statement. De Niro is one of many celebrity parents who are known for supporting their trans and non-binary children.

Airyn De Niro is is one of Robert De Niro’s seven children; her mother is actress and model Toukie Smith.

Airyn told Them in April that she was inspired to transition in her late twenties after seeing “trans women being honest and open, especially [in] public spaces like social media”. Witnessing such women “in their success” made her realise that “maybe it’s not too late for [her]”.

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She decided to speak publicly on her decision to transition after a story was published in the Daily Mail back in March, which referred to Robert De Niro’s “nepo baby” child having undergone a “shock transformation” – because she was rocking pink hair and wearing high-heeled boots.

“In terms of publicly coming out, I think it sort of felt forced in a way, just because I would have not said anything honestly if it wasn’t for those pictures that were taken without my consent,” she explained. “I prefer to keep things private.”

After the Mail’s article was published, Airyn mocked it on her private Instagram, but she was hurt that she hadn’t been able to tell her own story.

“You have so little pictures to go off of. Nobody contacted me beforehand, so all I said was like, ‘Well, at least interview me first’.

“There’s a lot of reasons why I maybe felt like it was too late for me to come out and tell my story. I am a late bloomer when it comes to transitioning. The majority of trans girls that I see online and TikTok who are passing, who have gone through their development with their bone structure and their body and everything like that, they were ahead of the game. I wasn’t. It was really scary.”

Yet thanks to the support from her father and wider family, Airyn said that she feels able to “present” herself authentically.

“I don’t know how I would present myself to the world or even present to myself if I didn’t have that knowledge in the back of my mind that my family accept me for who I am.”

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