'A total surprise to me': Martin Scorsese didn't expect Oscar win for The Departed

Martin Scorsese was stunned that 'The Departed' won him an Oscar for Best Director.

The legendary director explained that the 2006 film was made as his farewell to big-budget moviemaking and it took him by surprise that it gave him his only personal Academy Award triumph to date.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Scorsese said: "I had made 'The Departed' as a sign-off.

"I was leaving and just going to make some small films, I don't know. And it just happened that 'The Departed' clicked. And it was a very difficult one to make, for many different reasons. That's a whole other story.

"But we fought our way out of it – through it, I should say. Through it, out of it. And, when I finally threw it up on the screen, people liked it."

The 'Killers of the Flower Moon' director added: "I don't mean I didn't think it was good or bad. I just felt we had accomplished something. I didn't know it was going to be that way. I had no idea."

The 80-year-old filmmaker explained that he was hesitant about making 'The Departed' – which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson – after the "very, very" ugly distribution issues with 'The Aviator' but explained that the script for the crime thriller resonated with him.

The 'Casino' director recalled: "I found the script of 'The Departed' and I liked the idea and I said, 'Let's just make this in the streets and let's do something.'

"I was able to make 'Departed' pretty much the way I wanted to. But it was a knockdown, drag-out fight all the way from Day One to the end. So by that point I realised, if that's the way you're going to make a film, there's no sense anymore."

Scorsese continued: "Winning the award was – don't forget, it was thirty-seven years before an Oscar for Best Director, let alone Best Picture, which was a total surprise to me. But it's a different Academy from when I was starting. But, for me, that award was, it was inadvertent."