Martin Charles Scorsese[1] (/skɔrˈsɛzi/;[2][3] born November 17, 1942)[4][5][6][7] is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won an Academy Award, a Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award, Silver Lion, Grammy Award, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,[8] machismo, modern crime, and gang violence and conflict, and he liberally uses profanity in his films. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro.[9] He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated previously five times; he has subsequently been nominated once more, bringing his total number of nominations for Best Director to seven.