When actors are cast in a Martin Scorsese movie, it’s almost like getting a golden ticket, as no matter how pivotal or small the role is, their careers will change almost instantly. Whether he plucks them out of obscurity or finds them in off-broadway plays, Scorsese changed the landscape of cinema thanks to his casting choices.
Because Scorsese has such an authoritative creative voice in the industry, casting directors presumptuously go after his newest recruits without even having seen the movie. And if it wasn’t for the celebrated director enlisting these performers, audiences probably wouldn’t have the iconic characters that the actors would go on to portray afterward.
10 Harvey Keitel
Keitel actually starred in Scorsese’s directorial debut, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, but as that wasn’t exactly a breakthrough for either of them, it’d make their first successful and highly influential collaboration Mean Streets.
Since then, the actor has worked with Scorsese on a handful of other projects, including the most recent gangster epic, The Irishman. Keitel somehow gravitates towards movie auteurs, as he not only works with Scorsese but is a favorite of Tarantino’s too.
9 Asa Butterfield
Compared to its enormous budget, Hugo is considered to be a surprising box office bomb but it still made close to $200 million, and it introduced the world to Asa Butterfield. As he was just 14 years old upon the release of the movie, it made his acting chops in the kids’ 3D film that much more shocking.
After that, he became one of the youngest a-listers working in Hollywood, as he was the protagonist in Ender’s Game, and he’s now the lead actor in the massively popular Netflix original series Sex Education.
8 Jodie Foster
Being another actor who saw fame at such a young age thanks to Scorsese, Jodie Foster had a similar start to Butterfield, only in a wildly different movie. Scorsese cast the then 12-year-old as Iris, an underage sex worker that Travis attempts to save in Taxi Driver.
Following that exposure, she became the go-to teenager to lead family movies. But starring in Taxi Driver seemingly foreshadowed Foster’s adult career, as she has starred in so many crime dramas, including Panic Room, Flightplan, and Inside Man.
7 Albert Brooks
Other more jealous actors would argue that Albert Brooks got lucky, as his part of Tom in Taxi Driver is his very first film role. Since then, Brooks has had such a varied career, from starring in more dramas to even directing his own acclaimed movies.
And even his success in directing could be owed to Scorsese too, as watching the celebrated director work on set could only be inspiring. But Brooks isn’t even visible in his most famous role of all, as he voices Marvin in Finding Nemo.
6 Margot Robbie
Before getting a starring role in The Wolf of Wall Street, the most gangster-like movie not to actually be about gangsters, Margot Robbie had nothing more on her resume than a recurring role in an Australian soap opera.
When Robbie was first shown on screen, every viewer’s jaw dropped, and she became a bankable star seemingly overnight. Even eight years after its release, The Wolf of Wall Street still remains one of Robbie’s best movies.
5 Joe Pesci
Though Pesci has been somewhat typecast throughout his career as the “all bark, no bite” loudmouth character, it all started with Scorsese’s Raging Bull where he played Joey, Jake’s brother.
The actor cracked one of his ribs on set when sparring with De Niro, but it was all worth it, as he was not only nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but he has become a cinema icon. If it wasn’t for Raging Bull, audiences would never have seen him as Harry, one-half of the wet bandits, in Home Alone.
4 John Turturro
The first movie that Turturro ever appeared in was Raging Bull, but it wasn’t exactly a breakthrough performance, as he didn’t have any lines and he was even uncredited. But six years later, Turturro had a much bigger role in The Color of Money, the incredibly stylish pool movie starring Tom Cruise and Paul Newman.
Even with those two intimidating heavyweights in the lead roles, Turturro held his own, and it’s how he became such an incredible character actor.
3 Lorraine Bracco
The performances in Goodfellas are one of the reasons why it’s arguably Scorsese’s best movie, and while the male gangster characters get most of the screen time, Bracco stole the show whenever she was on screen. The actor played Karen Hill, a mob wife who struggled with coming to terms with Henry’s career but still enjoyed the fruits that came with it, and Bracco was almost typecast to that role for her career.
However, she went on to play Jennifer Melli, Tony Soprano’s therapist in The Sopranos, and it’s one of the show’s most celebrated performances.
2 Michael Imperioli
Bracco isn’t the only Goodfellas alum to get a major part on The Sopranos. As Goodfellas and The Sopranos have a lot in common, there’s a lot of crossover with their actors, but the biggest success story is Michael Imperioli.
Imperioli only has two scenes in the movie, but they’re two of the most important, as it shows just how depraved Tommy really is. Spider (Imperioli) gets shot in the foot as a joke and then murdered, and those two scenes were strong enough for him to get a major role in The Sopranos and act alongside James Gandolfini for six years.
1 Robert De Niro
It all started with Mean Streets. Being the movie that established Scorsese’s style, from being about the mafia lifestyle to being set in New York, it was also the movie that started arguably the greatest actor-director duo in cinema history.
Not only did Robert De Niro go on to star as Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II the following year and become one of the most prolific actors of all time, but the performer has worked with Scorsese nine times. Whether it’s playing a tormented cabbie in Taxi Driver or a regretful former hitman in The Irishman, the actor and director bring out the best in each other, and that has been the case for almost 50 years.
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