Robert De Niro recalls helping revive Lower Manhattan after 9/11

Robert De Niro watched the South Tower fall from Lower Manhattan, then returned to a neighborhood covered in dust and emptied by the attacks of September 11, 2001.

“I was just about to fly to California. I was at a meeting in Midtown, and instead of going to the airport, I came back down here, and saw the tower, the North Tower, the smoke coming out, and so on. And then saw the South Tower fall. I couldn't believe, I couldn't believe it,” De Niro told CBS News.

In the weeks that followed, he remembered sanitation trucks wetting down the streets every few hours to keep the dust from rising. Much of Lower Manhattan was covered in material from Ground Zero. De Niro taped up his windows because he feared the dust was toxic. It later proved to be.

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I was just about to fly to California. I was at a meeting in Midtown, and instead of going to the airport, I came back down here, and saw the tower, the North Tower, the smoke coming out, and so on. And then saw the South Tower fall. I couldn't believe, I couldn't believe it.

As the dust began to settle, De Niro and his longtime business partner, producer Jane Rosenthal, looked for a way to help bring the area back to life. Rosenthal said she was frightened as a mother, but also asked what they could do to help. The idea of a film festival in Tribeca, discussed before the attacks, suddenly carried a new urgency.

The first Tribeca Film Festival opened in May 2002, just eight months after 9/11. It drew more than 150,000 people and major figures including Nelson Mandela. De Niro said the decision was simple: “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

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It just seemed like the right thing to do.