Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese (1942- ), American director, writer, and producer, renowned for his films exploring the Italian-American experience. Martin Marcantonio Luciano Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942, in Long Island, New York, to a garment presser and a seamstress whose own parents had emigrated from Sicily at the beginning of the 20th century. Scorsese initially intended to become a Roman Catholic priest, but instead attended the New York University film school, where he won awards for his student films. He attracted critical attention for his first feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door? (released 1968, but first screened in 1967 as I Call First). In the 1970s and early 1980s, working with the actor Robert De Niro, Scorsese directed a series of powerful dramas, including Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and Raging Bull (1980), as well as the musical, New York, New York (1977), and the comedy drama, The King of Comedy (1982); Taxi Driver and Raging Bull secured several Academy Award (Oscar) nominations.

Martin Scorsese sparked controversy in 1988 with his film The Last Temptation of Christ, based on a 1960 novel by Greek author Níkos Kazantzákis, which depicted Christ as an ordinary human being with conflicting desires. In the 1990s Scorsese twice assembled the team of screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, and actors De Niro and Joe Pesci, for the Italian-American gangster films, GoodFellas (1990), which earned Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and Casino (1995), a study of greed, power, and the Mafia in 1970s Las Vegas. He returned to similar territory with Gangs of New York (2002), an epic account of the power struggle between Irish and Italian gangs in 19th-century New York, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Liam Neeson, and with The Departed (2006), a Boston-set remake of the Hong Kong crime thriller Mou gaan dou (2002; Infernal Affairs), starring Jack Nicholson; Scorsese won the Best Director award at the Golden Globes for each film, and a long-awaited Best Director Academy Award for The Departed, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Among Martin Scorsese's other notable films are The Age of Innocence (1993), a lavish adaptation of the novel by Edith Wharton, Kundun (1997), a meditative, sumptuously photographed account of the early life of the Dalai Lama and the political machinations that led to his exile from Tibet, and The Aviator (2004), a biopic of Howard Hughes starring DiCaprio. Scorsese documented his own family history in Italianamerican (1974), and also directed rock documentaries on Bob Dylan (No Direction Home, 2005), The Band (The Last Waltz, 1978), and The Rolling Stones (Shine a Light, 2008).