Robert De Niro's ex Toukie Smith dead at 74: Top model and Miami Vice star was mom of Taxi Driver icon's twins

Model-actress Toukie Smith, a top runway star of the 1970s who went on to steal scenes on hit TV series such as 227 and Miami Vice before becoming a restaurateur, has died at 74.

The renaissance woman once referred to as 'a cyclone of dizzy charm' passed away in a New York City hospital after a 'long, courageous battle' with multiple sclerosis, according to a statement from her twins, Airyn and Julian Henry De Niro, 31.

Smith shared her children with former partner actor Robert De Niro, 83, whom she dated on and off from 1988 to 1996. 

They welcomed their children, conceived by in vitro fertilization and delivered by a surrogate mother, in October 1995. Airyn, an aspiring model who was born male, made headlines in 2025, when she came out as a transgender woman with the support of her famous parents. 

Born Doris Smith on September 25, 1952, in Philadelphia to a factory worker mother and butcher father, she said her grandmother christened her with the enduring nickname Toukie.

'[The name] came from a children’s record about a little red fire engine with lots of energy. I’ve always had lots of energy,' Smith told the Los Angeles Times in 1990.

Of her often vibrantly colored hair, Smith told the outlet 'It’s an accessory. I’ve had orange, black, blue, white. Tomorrow it might be purple.'

As for the body that defies typical top model proportions of the day?

'I’m round, Honey. I’m not angular,' quipped the full-figured Smith, whose fondness for food led to a catering business, Toukie’s Taste, which lasted for three years and once supplied a 'feast' for Sean Penn and Madonna’s wedding anniversary in the 1980s.

Smith, who was declared Model of the Year by Bloomingdale's in 1978, famously modeled for a veritable who's who of elite fashion designers: Versace, Yves St. Laurent, Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, Issey Miyake, Thierry Mugler and her late brother Willi Smith, the ‘street couture’ trailblazer who died of AIDS at age 37 in 1987.

Smith expanded her talents to the small screen from 1987 to 1988 with a recurring role on the hit crime series Miami Vice as Angie, the assistant to pop singer Caitlin Davies (Sheena Easton), the wife of Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson).

She also played building manager Eva Rawley for two seasons of the sitcom 227 opposite Marla Gibbs and Jackée Harry in 1989 and 1990.

Her film credits included roles in indie cult hits such as Martin Lawrence's Talkin' Dirty After Dark (1991) and I Like it Like That (1994), as well as a role in the major studio release 'The Preacher's Wife,' opposite Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington, in 1996.

'Everybody has to get it right,' she told the New York Times in 1992. 'I am an actress first. I'm not a sometime model.'

She added: 'I thought modeling was rough with rejection. Huh! Welcome to the real world of acting!'

Alas, after semi-retiring from acting, Smith opened her Southern fine dining spot restaurant, Toukie's, in 1994 at 220 West Houston Street in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. 

'I opened this place because big parties are one thing,' she told the outlet after Toukie's first opened, 'but now it's time for us to come together, to connect.'

Famed model-activist Bethann Hardison, 84, recounted to the New York Times in 2025 how she watched as her friend Willi's little sister moved from her native Philly to New York City to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in 1972, establishing herself not only in the fashion world but also creating her own community.

Members of Smith's community were often greeted with a kiss, which branded them with Smith’s signature red lipstick, and the restaurant's namesake was also known to sit down and dine with delighted guests. 

'It was the joy of hosting that drove her,' Hardison told the outlet of the celebrity hot spot that closed in 1998.