Meet Martin Scorsese's three children who all followed in his footsteps - including actress daughter who worked alongside Leonardo DiCaprio

The first of Martin’s three daughters, Cathy Scorsese, was born in New York on December 7, 1965. She is the child of Martin and his first wife, the film icon’s college sweetheart Laraine Marie Brennan, and named after Scorsese’s mother Catherine.  

Cathy was first introduced to the film industry at just 8 years old when she attended the New York Film Festival’s opening night screening of Martin’s Mean Streets. An early interest in special effects, particularly how realistic the on-screen blood looked, turned into a career in entertainment. 

She studied under prop master Jim Mazzola in her mid-20s and has since worked on sets for shows such as Boardwalk Empire, The Departed and more. She is also credited with prop work on Shutter Island, the 2010 mystery thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio. As well as extensive work on-set, Cathy has starred in front of the camera, with cameos in The King of Comedy (1982) and Casino (1995) as Piscano’s daughter.

Domenica was born on 6 September 1976, around 11 years after her sister Cathy. She is the child of Martin’s second wife, teacher and Journalist, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. Her mother’s own upbringing influenced Domenica’s childhood, with Julia emphasising her own experience of early creative freedom in The Artist’s Way for Parents: Raising Creative Children. Domenica wrote and directed her first play at Trinity College in Dublin and produced the Torchlight Short Film Award-winning short A Little God (2001). She’s since directed the 2016 feature Almost Paris.

She has also pursued a career in acting, with credits including appearances in a few of her father’s projects like Cape Fear and The Age of Innocence, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder, as well as a lead role in an off-Broadway production of Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding (2000). She had her own (real) wedding in 2011 when she married Tony Frenzel.

Born 34 years after Martin’s first child just months before his marriage to his fifth wife Helen Morris, Francesca arrived on 16 November 1999. The actress TikTok creator and filmmaker says she “practically grew up on film sets”. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she explained: “I thought that life was really like playing pretend all the time.” 

As well as pursuing a career in film, she followed her dad to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, directing 25-minute drama Fish Out of Water in 2023. Like her sisters, she’s made appearances in some of her father’s projects (The Departed, The Aviator and Boardwalk Empire) and played Britney Orton in HBO series We Are Who We Are. She regularly posts videos on TikTok and Martin seems to enjoy getting in on the fun, first appearing on her account in April 2021.

The Oscar-winning director has been married five times. He first married college sweetheart Laraine Marie Brennan and they remained together for around 6 years. The couple divorced in 1971 and share a daughter, Catherine. 

He married his second wife, writer Julia Cameron, five years later they divorced in 1977. Two years after their split, he married actress and model Isabella Rossellini with the couple breaking things off after three years in 1982. He tied the knot next with American producer Barbara De Fina. They remained married for six years before their divorce in 1991.

The Killers of the Flower Moon director is currently married to Helen Morris, book editor and producer, who is reportedly a descendant of The Age of Innocence author Edith Wharton – a sweet connection to one of her director husband’s projects. She married Martin on 22 July 1999. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1990 and after turning 50, stepping away from publishing. Helen regularly attends events with her husband in support of the director.

Martin Scorsese was born in New York in 1942 to Sicilian parents Catherine and Charles Scorsese and raised in Little Italy. Scorsese’s love of cinema has its roots in a childhood illness. The director suffered from asthma and had something of an isolated childhood. 

He told GQ in 2023, “Watching films came out of a necessity from the illness of asthma. And it came out of loneliness, which I still have, which had to do with my father and my mother. And they couldn’t do anything with me. So they took me to the movies.”

He attended New York University’s School of Film and was awarded a BSc and MA in film communications.

Martin Scorsese’s first directorial project was 1967’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door before he got his big break, and first collaborative project with Robert De Niro, in Mean Streets (1973). What followed is an impressive career spanning nearly 100 screen-set adventures, per IMDB, and almost 200 award wins. 

Scorsese, who has 16 Academy Award nominations across his career, was awarded an Oscar for best director in 2007 for The Departed, a crime action feature which follows the South Boston cop Billy Costigan when he’s sent undercover to infiltrate the Irish-American mob syndicate run by Frank Costello. His most recently released project Martin Scorsese presents: The Saints (2024-2025) follows the lives and ends of historical saints such as Francis of Assisi and Mary Magdalene. His latest project, Cape Fear (set for June 2026) stars Amy Adams and Javier Bardem and is currently in post-production.