LOS ANGELES — Martin Scorsese is barely settled into his chair at a secluded hotel bar when he hears the doors to the entrance creak open.
Leonardo DiCaprio peeks his head through and scans the room, not sure where to find the director.
He knows now. Scorsese is up and out of the leather chair, his 5-foot-4 frame closing in on the star.
"How are you, my boy?" Scorsese asks, pulling him aside from onlookers at the bar. The way Scorsese asks the question — inches from DiCaprio, a hand cupped behind the actor's head — he seems to genuinely want an answer.
"It's been too long," Scorsese continues. "What has it been? Months?"
From another director, the exchange could sound hollow. Actors and filmmakers routinely work for months together on a film, become close and part ways forever.
But Scorsese is nothing if not loyal to the handful of stars he allows into his closest circle, a practice that leads actors to glom on to him as if he were the last life preserver on the Titanic.
Which, for DiCaprio, he was.
"He saved me," DiCaprio says without a hint of snark or sentiment. "I was headed down a path of being one kind of actor, and he helped me become another one. The one I wanted to be."
The pairing has become one of the most productive in Hollywood, and it has been career-altering for both men. For DiCaprio, Scorsese's sets are safe harbors, a place he can swear up a storm, practice East Coast accents, handle real guns and not worry about being only a film's pretty boy or romantic interest.
For Scorsese, mentoring the 35-year-old actor is a return to the kind of relationships he forged in the 1970s, when he was writing bitter serenades to New York with movies like "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver." As he did with Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, Scorsese, 67, takes a paternal interest in DiCaprio, suggesting roles, demanding dozens of takes and watching the actor mature.
It's new ground for DiCaprio. Not Scorsese. "Sometimes, you relate to an actor in ways you can't explain," Scorsese says. "I felt it with Harvey, I felt it with Robert, I feel it now. Over the course of years, you develop a rhythm that's hard to find in this business. But if you do find it, you don't let it go."
Collaboration
Since Scorsese got to know DiCaprio (at the urging of De Niro), the director has cast him in every feature film he has done since: Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004) and The Departed (2006). Together, the movies have taken in more than $300 million domestically (a fortune for R-rated Scorsese films) and tallied 26 Oscar nominations and wins — including Scorsese's long-awaited best-director statuette for The Departed.
They pair again for Shutter Island, a mystery thriller that marks new territory for both men. The film, which opens Feb. 19, is as close as Scorsese has come to a horror film since Cape Fear, his 1991 remake with De Niro. In Shutter Island, DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshal in 1954 who investigates the disappearance of a murderess from a hospital for the criminally insane.
Ask Scorsese why he's teaming for the fourth time in eight years with DiCaprio, and his answer is pretty straightforward: "I love seeing an actor at this stage in his life. When he can try new, braver things. I thought this was something new and brave for him."
DiCaprio's answer is simpler.
"I trust him."
The lure of Scorsese, says longtime friend Jodie Foster, is his seemingly endless energy to talk about anything from film to pasta. He looks like your favorite uncle with that quick laugh, caterpillar eyebrows and bottle-bottom glasses.
But his true role, Foster says, is as juggling parent for the stars on set. She recalls, as a 12-year-old making her big-screen debut in "Taxi Driver," watching Scorsese wear different hats. He was the gentle patriarch with Foster, explaining that the violent scenes (particularly the gruesome finale) were all just pretend.
For De Niro, though, Scorsese was more like a parent who knew how to talk to his teenager. "He just has the right balance," she says. "He let (De Niro) play and take chances on screen. But if you weren't on set and ready to work at 8:30 a.m., you heard about it. It makes an impression."
Shutter co-star Emily Mortimer can vouch for that. "Of all the geniuses I've met," she says, "he is the least-scary-looking one."
Friend of a friend
For the record, it was DiCaprio who made the impression on Scorsese. The director was preparing for the period drama "The Age of Innocence" when he got a phone call from De Niro.
The actor had been auditioning with four young actors for the 1993 film "This Boy's Life" and wanted to tell the filmmaker about one of them. The boy, De Niro explained, "sort of blew up" during the audition.
DiCaprio begins to blush. He is as private an actor as they come; he's loath to tell you what he had for lunch. But around Scorsese, he becomes all kid. He'll tell you every Scorsese film he has seen, in the order he has seen them, and where in the house he watched.
And he can't help himself here. He leans forward and takes over the story. "I was just supposed to say that a mustard jar hadn't been emptied," he says. "But I wanted to make an impression. So I just shouted 'Nooooooooooooooo!' at him at the top of my lungs. And all Bob could do was laugh."
Still, it caught De Niro's attention, and thus Scorsese's. When the director saw DiCaprio in his Oscar-nominated role "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," also in 1993, he became a fan of the kid.
Though the two had a solid working relationship during "Gangs of New York," the breakthrough in their friendship didn't come until their next film, "The Aviator," two years later. In one scene of the Howard Hughes biography, DiCaprio recalls, he was to speak through a bedroom door to a broken-hearted Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and convince her he wasn't losing his sanity.
"We did take after take, and I just wasn't getting it," DiCaprio recalls. "Then Marty pulls me aside and says I've got to quit acting and just see through the eyes of the character I'm playing. That I love this woman."
He snaps his fingers.
"And I got it. That's why we were doing take after take. Marty isn't trying to be a hard-ass. He's trying to get you to forget you're acting."
Two years later, the chemistry was down pat. They teamed for "The Departed," which became Scorsese's highest-grossing film, raking in $132 million — and four Oscars, including best picture.
Still, they won't talk about future films. "We really don't plan these things out; we just seem to be interested in similar projects," DiCaprio says. "But I know if Marty calls, it's worth the risk."
Now it's Scorsese who is animated. "That's the key. That's what makes for chemistry. You don't have to like the same things, just be willing to take the same chances."
As the interview ends, handlers, makeup artists and publicists descend to prepare the pair for the rest of the day.
DiCaprio stands up from his chair, putting an arm around Scorsese and a hand to the group. "Can we have a few more minutes?" he says. "It's been a while since we caught up."