Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese (, ; born November 17, 1942) is an American filmmaker.

He emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era.

Scorsese has received many accolades, including an Academy Award, four BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Directors Guild of America Awards.

Martin Charles Scorsese was born in the Flushing neighborhood of New York City's Queens borough on November 17, 1942.

He grew up in the Little Italy neighborhood of the city's Manhattan borough.

Both of his parents, Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, worked in the Garment District.

Charles was a clothes presser and actor, while Catherine was a seamstress and an actress.

All four of Scorsese's grandparents were Italian immigrants from Sicily, hailing from Polizzi Generosa on his father's side and Ciminna on his mother's side.

The original surname of the family was Scozzese, meaning "Scot" or "Scottish" in Italian, and was later changed to Scorsese because of a transcription error.

Scorsese was raised in a predominantly Catholic environment.

As a boy, he had asthma and could not play sports or take part in any activities with other children, so his parents and his older brother would often take him to movie theaters; it was at this stage in his life that he developed a passion for cinema.

He has also spoken of the influence of the 1947–48 Powell and Pressburger films Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, whose innovative techniques later impacted his filmmaking.

In his documentary titled A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, Scorsese said that he was enamored of historical epics in his adolescence, and at least two films of the genre, Land of the Pharaohs and El Cid, appear to have had a deep and lasting impact on his cinematic psyche.

Scorsese also developed an admiration for neorealist cinema at this time.

He recounted its influence in a documentary on Italian neorealism, and commented on how Bicycle Thieves, Rome, Open City and especially Paisà inspired him and influenced his view or portrayal of his Sicilian roots.

In his documentary, Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy), Scorsese noted that the Sicilian episode of Roberto Rossellini's Paisà, which he first saw on television with his relatives who were themselves Sicilian immigrants, had a significant impact on his life.

He acknowledges owing a great debt to the French New Wave and has stated that "the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since, whether they saw the films or not."

He has also cited the works of Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Ishirō Honda, and Eiji Tsuburaya as major influences on his career.

Although there was no habit of reading at home, towards the end of the 1950s, Scorsese began to approach literature, being marked in particular by The Heart of the Matter (1948) by Graham Greene, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce and Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

As a teenager in the Bronx, he frequently rented Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) from a store that had one copy of the reel.

He was one of only two people who regularly rented it; the other, George A. Romero, would also become a film director.

Scorsese has named Sabu and Victor Mature as his favorite actors during his youth.

Scorsese attended the all-boys Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, graduating in 1960.

He had initially desired to become a priest, attending a preparatory seminary but failed after the first year.

This gave way to cinema and consequently Scorsese enrolled in NYU's Washington Square College (now known as the College of Arts and Science), where he earned a B.A. in English in 1964.

His directorial debut, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), was accepted into the Chicago Film Festival.

Scorsese received a Master of Arts degree from New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development in 1968.

In the 1970s and 1980s decades, Scorsese's films, much influenced by his Italian-American background and upbringing in New York City, center on macho-posturing men and explore crime, machismo, nihilism, and Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption.

His trademark styles include extensive use of slow motion and freeze frames, graphic depictions of extreme violence, and liberal use of profanity.

His 1973 crime film Mean Streets was a blueprint for his filmmaking styles.

Scorsese won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with his 1976 psychological thriller Taxi Driver, which starred Robert De Niro, who became associated with Scorsese through eight more films including New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980) The King of Comedy (1982), Goodfellas (1990), and Casino (1995).

In the following decades, he garnered box office success with a series of collaborations with Leonardo DiCaprio.

He is also known for several rock music documentaries including The Last Waltz (1978), No Direction Home (2005), Shine a Light (2008), and George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011).

His other films include After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Age of Innocence (1993), Kundun (1997), Hugo (2011), and Silence (2016).

An advocate for film preservation and restoration, he founded three nonprofit organizations: The Film Foundation in 1990, the World Cinema Foundation in 2007, and the African Film Heritage Project in 2017.

He has been honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1997, the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute in 1998, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2007, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2010, and the BAFTA Fellowship in 2012.

Five of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

These films include Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

In addition to film, Scorsese has directed episodes for some television series including the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2011–2015), and Vinyl (2016), as well as the HBO documentary Public Speaking (2010), and the Netflix docu-series Pretend It's a City (2021).

He reunited with De Niro with The Irishman (2019) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), the latter also featuring DiCaprio.