After coming out as trans in an emotional piece for Them last month, Airyn De Niro, the daughter of Hollywood icon Robert De Niro, has posted a video thanking her followers for the outpouring of support.

“I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who sent me all their love and support,” she said, “friends, family, strangers, old peers from school, thank you for reaching out, it means a lot.”

Related

Billy Idol got his start at gay clubs: “It was very embracing”
The singer said he was often among “People who didn’t feel like they fit in for whatever reason” at the time.

She also thanked her parents for their acceptance and support and said she “could not have asked for better parents.”

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Then she addressed the folks who she said have reached out to her to offer her acting and modeling roles. In her coming out piece, she said she wants to be a voice actor and model, but that she wants to succeed through her own hard work rather than through her connections.

“I’m very flattered and I’m honoured that you would consider me,” she told the people who have offered her gigs, but said she does not feel she’s “deserving of those opportunities.”

“While I recognize coming out in and of itself is an act of bravery,” she explained, “especially given the current climate of things, there are folks who have it much harder than I do, who live in areas who have circumstances that are much more dangerous and scary than I do, who despite all that, still live their truths and come out, and I want to hold space for them.”

“I want to recognize them. I want to say thank you to them, and I hope that those individuals who are way braver than I am, I hope they are presented with the same opportunities that I am, and I hope those who’ve reached out to me find those folks because they deserve to have their dreams come true.”

She added, “Everybody deserves a chance, and I don’t think I’ve hit that point yet… I really wanna feel like I’ve earned it.”

Airyn De Niro, 29, came out after a series of gossipy articles about her “new look” essentially outed her before she could do it herself.

“Not only did they get information wrong about me… They just sort of reminded me that people really don’t know anything about me,” she told Them, adding, “There’s a difference between being visible and being seen. I’ve been visible. I don’t think I’ve been seen yet.”

She added that she hopes when people see her, they see “someone who is trying their hardest to heal from growing up not feeling good about themselves. [And] in the process of that, trying to make other people feel good about themselves.” 

After the piece came out, her father had a heartwarming reaction.

In a statement released to multiple news outlets, Robert De Niro declared that he loved and supported Airyn before she came out and that nothing has changed.

“I love and support Airyn as my daughter,” he said, before boiling down the current backlash to trans people’s existence in the simplest of terms: “I don’t know what the big deal is.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.