Renowned filmmaker and boundless creative force Martin Scorsese (1942– ) was born on this day in Flushing, New York, to a Sicilian-American family whose stories, rituals, and neighborhood rhythms shaped his artistic soul.

Often ill as a child, Scorsese found refuge in movie theaters—a sanctuary that sparked his devotion to film and storytelling. “As a child I wanted to be a painter,” he recalled, but cinema soon claimed him with its living canvas of feeling and possibility.

His early work included the raw, personal drama Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1968). His breakthrough came with Mean Streets (1973), starring his lifelong collaborator Robert De Niro, a film that announced him as a fearless new voice in American cinema.

With Taxi Driver (1976), he created one of the century’s defining portraits of loneliness. Raging Bull (1980) followed—an uncompromising masterpiece many critics named the decade’s greatest. Through every era, Scorsese explored moral complexity, faith, violence, beauty, and the fragile redemption of being human.

In 2006, he won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed. In the twenty-first century, he has continued to craft ambitious, soul-searching epics such as Silence (2016), The Irishman (2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), bringing overlooked histories and deeper human truths into the light.

A tireless preservationist, Scorsese founded The Film Foundation in 1990 and later the World Cinema Project, helping to save more than 1,000 films from decay. His work protects the world’s cinematic heritage and keeps its stories alive for future generations. “Like jazz,” he said, “cinema is the great indigenous American art form.”

Scorsese’s wry humor stays sharp and humble, keeping him grounded. “I have the best job in the world. It’s not really work,” he once said. Beneath everything is a lifelong devotion to the transformative power of story.