Martin Scorsese doesn't think he could make it as a "Hollywood filmmaker" .

Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese

The legendary director feels like a "thief" with his success because he has "got away with" making movies "in the margins" that struck a chord with his own upbringing in New York's Lower East Side.

He admitted to SBS Movies: "I kind of look back now and I say after all these years, 'I couldn't make it as a Hollywood movie maker'.

"I was almost a thief who got away with making these movies in the margins of the book. Some were more in a marketable range.... Others are not. I found I could only really get excited about stories that I wanted to tell and they seem to be more internal and personal."

Scorsese's latest movie, 'Silence', stars Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as two missionaries in 17th century Japan who are sent to find an older Jesuit (Liam Neeson) who is rumoured to have renounced his faith - and is a project he has been wanting to work on since he was introduced to the story by New York Archbishop Paul Moore when his 1988 movie 'The Last Temptation of Christ' was released.

However, he admitted that for many years he "didn't know how to express what [he] was feeling" and the film could have not happened.

He said: "All of it came together but it took many, many years. There are many reasons why the film could not have been made, would not have been made but I decided to keep going and it put people around me through a lot of hardship and difficulties, and so if that 'means' anything it means that i really wanted to make it!"