Director Martin Scorsese and his wife, Helen Morris, have been together for close to 30 years, after meeting later in life. The couple decided to marry and have a child together though the famous publisher had long thought she would never give up her independence.
Decades later, they’re still deeply committed and in love, with a daughter who has become a director herself. Here’s everything to know about Helen Morris and how she connected with the Academy Award-winning director.
Who is Helen Morris?
Born in 1947 to Stephen Van Cortlandt Morris and Persis Mason, Helen Morris is a native New Yorker with a very connected family history. She is related to General Lew Morris and Gouverneur Morris, both known for signing the Declaration of Independence, according to The New York Times. She is also a descendent of famed author Edith Wharton.
Her dad worked as a diplomat for 25 years and traveled all over, but Morris mostly lived in New York until she went to study at Georgetown University. She divorced her first husband and moved to Paris, leaving school. She eventually returned to Columbia University and went on to become a very successful book editor at Random House. Morris worked with a lot of big names and was in Scorsese’s friend circle before they ever became romantically involved. In 1996, she worked on her future mother-in-law’s cookbook, Italianamerican: The Scorsese Family Cookbook.
Soon after turning 50, the editor stepped away from publishing. She had received a diagnosis for Parkinson’s disease in 1990. While on SiriusXM podcast, This Life of Mine with James Corden, Scorsese said of his wife’s illness, “I find that her strength is something … I’ve never seen such strength like that in a person and such a fortitude and a positive way of approaching life under the worst of circumstances.”
How did they meet?
Morris was charged with working on the memoir of filmmaker Michael Powell, Million Dollar Movie, a close friend of Scorsese’s. She was supposed to escort the director to an event for the book but arrived late on that rainy afternoon. Morris told Talk magazine that it was a “disaster.”
“We sort of grunted at each other,” she added.
In the same interview, Scorsese said, “The first time I noticed Helen was in a meeting. I was editing Casino, and I was consumed by the picture. I was there but not there…I looked over and saw a pair of legs intertwined in these pastel stockings. Slowly, I looked up. It was like a long, slow tilt to her face.”
He continued, “I was very struck by her. Besides being attracted to her physically, her intelligence was very attractive to me. It was very sexy.”
She responded, “I thought he was great, and we laughed a lot. He was funny.”
In summer 1996, Morris visited her future husband in Morocco where he was filming Kundan, about the Dalai Lama, intending to only stay a week. She stayed until Thanksgiving.
“We found that we just got along really well. We never fight. I’m calm, and he’s not,” she said. “We come at things from different angles, but we often reach the same conclusion. I think we are both at this stage when we know what we want—and we know what we don’t want.”
He shared, “You make a family with a person like Helen. She’s someone I want to be with, she’s a companion. I learn a great deal from her.”
How long have they been married?
About four years after meeting, they were married on July 22, 1999, according to Entertainment Weekly. She had apparently been reluctant to marry after her previous divorce.
“Before, everything had to be on my terms,” she explained. “It wasn’t conscious, of course. By the time I met Marty, I had figured things out. Marty is very direct about what he wants. I was happy to give that.”
Do they have any children?
Morris gave birth to their daughter, Francesca, when she was 52 years old, on Nov. 16, 1999, four months after marrying the director. She told Talk that she conferred with a high-risk pregnancy doctor and “got pregnant immediately.”
“I have Parkinson’s. I was in bed for a few months, but it was easy. I watched a lot of television,” Morris said.
Scorsese told James Corden, “This was like some special blessing of some kind. It suddenly changed all the values, what I thought was important in life.”
Now all grown up, Francesca followed in her dad’s footsteps and became a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She debuted her first film, Fish Out of Water, in 2023.
“He is the best teacher, guide, just overall mentor—and also, he’s literally my best friend. I tell him everything,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
In addition to Francesca, Scorsese has two daughters from his previous relationships, Cathy and Domenica.