Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese look back on decades of collaboration

Leonardo DiCaprio joined Martin Scorsese in New York on Wednesday night for Time’s A Year in Time event, offering a candid look at their decades-long partnership — and his new experience working with Paul Thomas Anderson on One Battle After Another.

DiCaprio, recently named Time’s 2025 Entertainer of the Year, reflected on how deeply Anderson has drawn from Scorsese’s work.

The Revenant star recalled meeting Anderson early in his career, just before filming Titanic. “We were talking about doing Boogie Nights. I was in my mother’s living room and I’ll never forget, I was on the couch and he brought a LaserDisc of Raging Bull and a video cassette of pornography. And he said, ‘I want to do the Raging Bull of p*****graphy.’”

Scorsese reacted with a laugh: “Oh wow, that’s interesting.” DiCaprio, who has long described passing on Boogie Nights as his biggest career regret, added, “There’s so much commonality in the way both of you work.”

Scorsese and DiCaprio also confirmed they are preparing to shoot their seventh film together starting in February. The actor described their collaborative approach: “Our process is to almost have a debate for months before; lots of questions and lots of playing devil’s advocate about a way to approach things that may not be the most obvious direction.”

Scorsese said that working on The Aviator in 2004 “was kind of a rebirth of the enjoyment of creating something in cinema,” which led them to keep returning to each other’s work. He praised DiCaprio’s curiosity and commitment.

DiCaprio also shared one lingering regret: “I would have loved to be much more of a voyeur if I could have been to watch what you do behind the camera.” 

He dismissed any idea of directing himself: “I would never want to direct… I could never do anything close to what Martin Scorsese does.”