Martin Scorsese heads into this year’s Academy Awards the most nominated living director, with 10 nods – and one win – in the best director category. His latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, has 10 nominations, including best picture and best director.
Scorsese has announced plans to shoot his next film, about the life of Jesus, later this year, meaning an awards push for that movie in 2026 or 2027. Yet a new report suggests the film-maker, 81, may make a surprise appearance at next year’s Oscars on account of his acting prowess.
According to Variety, the director has restarted his occasional on-screen appearances with a supporting role in Julian Schnabel’s meta drama about the creative genesis of The Divine Comedy.
In the Hand of Dante features Scorsese as an elderly sage who advises Oscar Isaac’s Dante Alighieri over a 20-year time period. Variety says two people who have seen footage from the film, which is in post-production, have been “impressed by the intensity of Scorsese’s performance”, which Schnabel calls “extraordinary”.
It is, continued the director, “a brilliant, important role … You can’t take your eyes off him.”
Scorsese has long cameoed in many of his films, including in his latest, and has sometimes performed in others. He played Vincent van Gogh in a segment of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990) and voiced a loan shark pufferfish in Shark Tale (2004).
He also frequently plays versions of himself on the small screen, most notably in an advert for Amex, and on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Schnabel’s film is based on the mystery by Nick Tosches, in which a handwritten manuscript of The Divine Comedy is found in the Vatican library, and from there makes its way to a mob boss in 21st-century New York.
Al Pacino, Gal Gadot, John Malkovich, Jason Momoa and Gerard Butler also co-star. The film is tipped to premiere at the Venice film festival in August.
Scorsese is currently at the Berlin film festival, where he is receiving an honorary Golden Bear award. He and most of the Killers of the Flower Moon cast were notable absentees from last Sunday’s Bafta awards in London, where the film was nominated for nine awards, but went home empty handed.
Both Scorsese, in the directing category, and leading actress Lily Gladstone, were surprise omissions from the Bafta shortlists.