Ellen Burstyn won an Oscar in 1975 for her role in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” but her award-winning performance may never have come into fruition if she hadn’t educated the film’s director, a young Martin Scorsese, about women. In fact, it was Burstyn who got him hired for the gig after she developed the film.

The “House of Cards” actress was impressed by “Mean Streets,” a drama Scorsese had made the year prior, and wanted him to helm “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” She wasn’t without reservations, though. “I liked your film very much, but this is a film I want told from a woman’s point of view,” she told him upon meeting him for the first time. “I can’t tell looking at your film if you know anything about women.” Scorsese offered a perfect, humble response: he told her, “I’d like to learn.”

Burstyn, in a recent interview with The Telegraph, commented, “I think he did learn a lot…He’s physically delicate and he’s very short, and I don’t think his relationships with women up until that point had been very successful,” she explained. “You saw a nervous little kid, kind of.” Bursytn heard from Scorsese recently — he wanted her to know that only now, decades later, did he recognize how great she’d been to collaborate with.

You can catch Burstyn in “Wiener-Dog,” in theaters now. For more of her candid interview, where she touches on her role in “House of Cards,” the current state of film, and her brave decision to move to New York to act with less than ten dollars in cash, head over to The Telegraph.