Considered by many to be the finest actor of his generation, De Niro's also a quintessential New Yorker and he owns about half of Tribeca to prove it.

Raised in Little Italy, De Niro studied under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio. His big break came in 1973 when he played a street thug in Matin Scorsese'sMean Streets, and a year later, his performance as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II earned him his first Oscar. Since then he's appeared in over 50 films, starring as psychotic cabbie Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, the mild-mannered but ruthless gangster Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas, and recently has branched out into comedies such as Analyze This, Meet the Parents and animated fare like Shark Tale.

De Niro has been just as busy off-screen over the past two decades. In 2002 De Niro co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival as part of a big to revive downtown Manhattan. He's also a major force in Tribeca real estate and dining with a major stake in various hotels and restaurants with A-List co-financiers. However, De Niro's Tribeca hegemony hasn't pleased everyone in the hood. Some area residents have started referring to Greenwich Street, the epicenter of his holdings, as "Bobby Row." [Image via Getty]