10 Movie Easter Eggs Added At The Last Minute

2. Martin Scorsese's Cameo - Taxi Driver

The Easter Egg

Though pretty much anyone with even a passing interest in film knows what Martin Scorsese looks like nowadays, that wasn't always the case, and certainly not in 1976 when he made two cameo appearances in his instant classic Taxi Driver.

Scorsese's first cameo is a fleeting background role near the start of the film, but his far more prominent second cameo casts him as a disturbed passenger of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) who spies on his estranged wife and tells Bickle that he's planning to murder her. Charming.

The Story

Originally, Scorsese was only supposed to have a single cameo, but after the original actor cast to play the creepy passenger was injured on another film, the director had no choice but to play the part himself.

Writer Paul Schrader said of the scene, "I was afraid that Marty would see himself and would be so mortified he would cut himself out of the movie, and I liked the scene. But I was a hundred per-cent wrong. He saw it, loved it and kept every single bit of himself in."

And indeed, as far as director cameos go, it's absolutely remarkable stuff.