American award-winning film director who is known for his attraction to the seamy side of life. Scorsese is considered to be one of the most influential American filmmakers of our time. His films belong to a variety of genres including his better-known dramatic pieces, musical drama, documentaries, biopics, and epics with themes that usually involve alienation, desperation, violence, or betrayal. Although he is best known as a director, he has produced a number of films and occasionally makes cameo appearances as an actor. A serious student of film he is intent on preserving the best of the silver screen.
Raised in the New York tenements, Scorsese was a sickly kid whose asthma frequently kept him indoors. He and his parents often escaped to the movies, and the young boy became fascinated with the silver screen. An altar boy at his neighborhood Catholic church, he entered the seminary to become a priest but dropped out after a year. He enrolled in the New York film school where he made prize-winning student shorts. Earning his master’s degree in 1968 at New York University, he went on to become an instructor in the university’s film department. Here he directed his first feature released in 1969: “Who’s That Knocking at My Door?” After moving to Hollywood where he worked on “Boxcar Bertha,” he assembled his memories of growing up in the hard-edged community of Little Italy in New York. “Mean Streets” in 1973 was the successful result. “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” in 1974 brought him acclaim as well, but it wasn’t until 1976 that he hit the big time with “Taxi Driver,” starring Robert DeNiro, a fellow New Yorker.
His work is often controversial, and “The Last Temptation of Christ” provoked the most heated debate of all his films, incurring threats of boycotts from Christian groups. With films such as “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas” and a remake of “Cape Fear” to his name, violence is a major motif in his work. Addressing questions about it, he has said “It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.”
A slight man with black-streaked gray hair and trademark bushy black eyebrows, Scorsese prefers to remain a Hollywood outsider. Cameron Diaz has described him as “an encyclopedia of film history” who talks constantly about film. Although his powerful films have won many prestigious awards, he has never been awarded an Oscar for Best Picture or Best Director.
Scorsese has been married to five women and divorced from four. His second wife was Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way,” whom he married in 1975. In 1979, he married his third wife, Isabella Rossellini. His fourth marriage in 1985 ended in divorce as well, and, on July 22, 1999, Scorsese married for the fifth time, this time to book editor Helen Morris in New York, NY. Their daughter Francesca was born on November 16, 1999. Scorsese has two other daughters from two prior marriages. His mom, Catherine, died of Alzheimer’s on January 6, 1997.
His film, “The Departed,” was released in October 2006. Starring Hollywood celebrities like Jack Nicholson, Leonardo di Caprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberger, the movie has critics and audiences alike predicting several Academy Award nominations and perhaps even that elusive statuette for Best Picture or Best Director. Finally on February 25, 2007, the acclaimed director was recognized by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, this time twice: for Best Director and Best Film (“The Departed”). On 25 Feb 2012, his film ‘Hugo’ received five Oscars, though in minor categories.
Link to photo by David Shankbone
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