Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese is a screenwriter, producer, and director from the United States. He has won an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, four British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Directors Guild of America Awards, among others. Scorsese was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1997, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2007, and the BAFTA Fellowship in 2012. The Library of Congress has entered five of his works into the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important."

In 1968, Scorsese earned an MA from NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), his directorial debut, was accepted into the Chicago Film Festival. Scorsese rose to prominence as one of the leading players of the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Scorsese's films are centered on macho-posturing insecure men and explore criminality, machismo, nihilism, and Catholic conceptions of guilt and atonement, and are heavily influenced by his Italian-American heritage and upbringing in New York City. Slow-motion and freeze frames are common in his work, as are vivid images of violent violence and liberal use of profanity.

Born: November 17, 1942, Flushing, New York, United States