Martin Scorsese (1942- ), American film-maker, whose films explore the Italian-American experience. Scorsese was born in New York and 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 on My Door? (1968). In the 1970s and early 1980s, working with actor Robert De Niro, he directed a series of powerful dramas, including Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), and Raging Bull (1980), securing several Academy Award (Oscar) nominations.

Scorsese turned to comedy with The King of Comedy (1983) and After Hours (1985), before directing The Color of Money (1986). In 1988 he sparked bitter controversy with his film The Last Temptation of Christ, based on a 1960 novel by Greek author Níkos Kazantzákis that depicted Christ as an ordinary human being with conflicting desires.

In 1990 Scorsese directed the gangster film GoodFellas (featuring De Niro), for which he earned Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He directed Cape Fear, again starring De Niro, a 1991 remake of a 1962 thriller, as well as The Age of Innocence (1993), an adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel of the same name. In 1995 Scorsese reassembled most of the GoodFellas team, including writer Nicholas Pileggi, De Niro, and Joe Pesci, for Casino, a study of greed, power, the Mafia, and a fall from grace in 1970s Las Vegas. In 1997 Scorsese was given the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. His work took a new turn with Kundun (1997), a meditative, sumptuously photographed film recounting the early life of the Dalai Lama and the political machinations that led to his exile from Tibet.

Scorsese directed Bringing Out the Dead in 1999, the story of 48 hours in the life of a burnt-out paramedic who is haunted by the memories of people he could not save, starring Nicolas Cage. He then returned to familiar 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 both films, and a long-awaited Best Director Academy Award for The Departed, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture. His biopic of Howard Hughes, The Aviator (2004), starring DiCaprio, was rewarded at the Golden Globes with the prize for Best Dramatic Film. He also directed the documentaries The Last Waltz (1978), featuring rock group The Band, and No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005). Scorsese signed a four-year “first-look” deal with Paramount in 2006.