Scorsese is cinema’s greatest director. Is he also one of the greatest actors of his time?

Martin Scorsese’s late-career pivot is my religion. At 83, when he probably should be kicking back on a hill in Sicily with a straw hat on his head and pane di casa crumbs on his lap, the legendary director is everywhere. And oddly, it’s mostly in front of the camera rather than behind it.

At first, it was simply amusing. He’s there goofing around in his daughter Francesca’s TikToks. Or he’s playing himself in the Emmy-winning series The Studio, maniacally pitching studio bosses his idea for a film about the Jonestown massacre. He’s even there on the cover of Charli XCX’s new album, chilling alongside John Cale and Marc Jacobs in a holy trinity of Brats.

It’s fun to see Scorsese, never afraid of some lighthearted self-flagellation – who can forget his cameo on Curb Your Enthusiasm, directing Larry David as a wise guy? – still getting silly and loose with his cineaste persona. But suddenly, it’s become a bit more eye-opening. Martin Scorsese: the best actor in Hollywood? The evidence is accumulating.

In Jonah Hill’s otherwise cringingly undercooked film Outcome, Scorsese is a wellspring of pure pathos playing a character named Red Rodriguez, an ageing agent to child stars who runs his business out of a bowling alley. Scorsese plays the role with the lived experience of an industry insider who has seen the type.

In scenes opposite Keanu Reeves – who plays the troubled former child star Reef Hawk, now out making amends – Scorsese is all puffy-eyed regret and hanging-by-a-thread hustle. He knows he’s just a stepping stone on a precocious kid’s career trajectory, and maybe an immoral one at that – but when he casually berates Reeves for never giving him a call over all their lost years, he makes you feel like you’ve abandoned your grandparents.

Unexpectedly, Scorsese also pops up in Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, another new film that absolutely no one saw. Which is a shame, because he plays a fast-talking four-armed monkey who’s a food truck fry-cook in a city that looks exactly like Blade Runner’s Los Angeles. (Please don’t send me mail saying “Actually, he’s an Ardennian on Shakari”, no one cares.)

This performance is Scorsese in his element, complete with that rapid-tongued voice you’ve heard narrating countless enthusiastic documentaries about Italian neorealism. At this point if you need a wiry, unhinged, little old man with a reedy Noo Yawk accent and hard-won wisdom in his eyes, Scorsese is your guy (and sometimes, your monkey).

Most recently, he appeared in Julian Schnabel’s messy adaptation of Nick Tosches’ sprawling novel, In the Hand of Dante (streaming on Netflix). If the film’s a dog’s breakfast, it might hold my favourite Scorsese performance so far, as he plays Isaiah, a 14th-century mentor to Dante Alighieri.

Sporting a wild Gandalf beard and sad eyes, he’s quiet, odd and sage-like, and mumble-whispers random queries such as, “You know what our main folly is? Tempus fugit.” After this, Scorsese should be getting offers out the wazoo to play “mystical sage”.

Scorsese, the late-stage actor, might be a revelation, but we shouldn’t be surprised: he’s always been good at this. Let’s not forget his chilling performance in Taxi Driver, when he stole a scene from Robert De Niro himself with his barely coiled, coked up backseat fury. Or in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, when he played Vincent van Gogh and gruffly contemplated the impulse that compels an artist to make art. And to a whole generation (of stoners), he’s mainly the skittish puffer fish with the big bushy eyebrows in the animated film Shark Tale. We call that “range”.

Perhaps what’s most impressive about Scorsese, the incredible actor, is that he’s not even necessarily angling for a new career: these performances are mostly just favours for his filmmaker friends.

In other words, they shouldn’t be anywhere near this good. But Scorsese can’t help it. He’s pure cinema, no matter what side of the camera he’s on.

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