Last year, Martin Scorsese‘s latest film Killers of the Flower Moon joined the pantheon of the director’s decorated filmography and has scored a nomination for both Best Picture and Best Director at the upcoming 96th Academy Awards.
The film, starring longtime collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio and chronicling the FBI investigation into members of the Osage Native American tribe in the 1920s, earned buzz long before its release, receiving rave reviews from critics and audiences and increasing the likelihood that Scorsese will add to his already illustrious history with Oscar wins.
Given his long history with the Academy, some pundits have long predicted that Scorsese will at least win for Best Picture. However, others have pointed to Killers Of The Flower Moon‘s somewhat mediocre performance at the Golden Globes — where it collected just one trophy out of seven nominations — as evidence that Scorsese might walk away empty-handed.
The acclaimed director has some tough competition, too. Christopher Nolan has been largely sweeping the awards circuit with Oppenheimer (the most agreed-upon frontrunner), but pundits haven’t yet counted out a win for Yorgos Lanthimos, either.
In anticipation of his Academy Award contention for Killers of the Flower Moon, we’re looking back on just how many Oscars Martin Scorsese has won.
Has Martin Scorsese ever won an Oscar?
Martin Scorsese has been nominated for an Oscar 14 times over the course of his acclaimed decades-long career, most commonly receiving nods for Best Director or Best Picture (sometimes both). Despite this illustrious history, the director has only won the trophy once, collecting an Oscar for Best Director in 2007 for the Jack Nicholson-starring crime drama, The Departed. The award was presented to Scorsese in 2007 by fellow directing legends Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
Before his win, Scorsese had been nominated for the Best Director Oscar five times, for his work on films like Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Gangs of New York and The Aviator. Since his win for The Departed, Scorsese has been in contention for the Best Director award on three more occasions, namely for his films Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Irishman.
Those three films were also in the race for Best Picture in their respective years, outlining another Oscars category where Scorsese has likewise been a mainstay. Taxi Driver, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Aviator and Goodfellas are among the nine films directed by Scorsese to be nominated for Best Picture, with his sole victory in this category The Departed, which won Best Picture in 2007.
Meanwhile, Scorsese has been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay twice, for his penmanship on both Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence.