Martin Scorsese finds inspiration in his children.
The Oscar-winning director, whose career has spanned five decades and more than 20 film, has three daughters: Cathy, Domenica and Francesca. His girls were exposed to the movie industry from a young age and his youngest daughter even inspired him to produce the Academy Award-winning film Hugo, which was based on one of her favorite childhood books: The Invention of Hugo Cabret.
“Being a father at a later age is different from when I had my other two daughters when I was in my 20s and 30s. If you’re in your 60s and you’re with the kid every day, you’re dealing with the mind of a child, so it opens up that childishness in you again,” he told Parade magazine. “You start playing and getting into the fantasy of the kid, so you make up even crazier stories and suddenly we’re making this movie! She’s a lifesaver!”
After Scorsese and Brennan divorced, the Killers of the Flower Moon producer went on to marry journalist Julia Cameron. Within a year of tying the knot, they welcomed their daughter Domenica on Sept. 6, 1976.
Their daughter was raised in a creative environment, something Cameron praised in her 2013 book, The Artist’s Way for Parents: Raising Creative Children.
Domenica’s artistic upbringing paved the way for a career in show business. She studied filmmaking at Wesleyan University and Trinity College in Dublin, where she wrote and directed her first play. She produced her first short film, A Little God, in 2001, which won the Torchlight Short Film Award. After hitting a stumbling block in 2007 with one of her passion projects, she became the director for the 2016 feature film, Almost Paris.
“If there’s one piece of advice I have for aspiring filmmakers it’s this: Make something. The act of making something is more important than all of the reasons combined not to make something. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way,” she told IndieWire.
She also has credits for her work in front of the camera including appearances in films such as Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993) and The Lurker (2019), and landed the lead role of off-Broadway bride Tina in the interactive comedy, Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding (2000).
As for her personal life, Domenica married husband Tony Frenzel in a Chicago ceremony in November 2011.
Francesca Scorsese, 24
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Scorsese and his fifth and current wife, Helen Morris, welcomed their daughter, Francesca, on Nov. 16, 1999, approximately four months after saying, “I do.”
As a child, Francesca was immersed in filmmaking, which served as inspiration for her career.
“I mean, I practically grew up on film sets. It was literally my life. And I thought that life was really like playing pretend all the time,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I have so many memories — I mean, my dad put me on the prop plane from The Aviator, and I thought I was on a real plane, and then the turbulence started, and now I’m terrified of airplanes — I cannot fly! That was me when I was 3 years old. As I got older, I was like, ‘I want to do this.’ “
She graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, which is also her father’s alma mater, and premiered her directorial debut Fish Out of Water in June 2023. The 25-minute drama, which follows a struggling young mom who has an opportunity to reconnect with her estranged family after her now-sober father shares news of her mother’s failing health, was Francesca’s thesis for NYU.
She is also comfortable in front of the lens, having played Britney Orton in HBO’s We Are Who We Are and appeared in several of her dad’s projects, including The Departed, The Aviator and Boardwalk Empire.
“He is the best teacher, guide, just overall mentor — and also, he’s literally my best friend. I tell him everything,” she said of her father.
When the father-daughter duo aren’t working, they can be seen hanging out together and making viral TikTok videos. Scorsese first appeared on her TikTok in April 2021 and has made several cameos since, including when Francesca quizzed him on modern slang in October 2023.
The father-daughter duo’s latest collaboration was on a 2024 Super Bowl commercial for Squarespace. Francesca served as the behind-the-scenes creative director and captured Scorsese’s directorial process from start to finish.
Source: People
