Thelma Schoonmaker represents half of one of cinema’s most celebrated partnerships between a director and an editor, having worked on every Martin Scorsese title since 1980’s Raging Bull, which garnered the 67-year-old her first Academy Award. Twenty-seven years and two additional Oscars later (The Aviator, The Departed), the graceful Schoonmaker reflects on meeting the director at New York University in the 1960s, and fondly remembers her husband, legendary British director Michael Powell. She and Scorsese are currently working on restoring films by Powell and his partner Emeric Pressburger, including 1948’s The Red Shoes.

Playback recently sat down with Schoonmaker in Toronto, prior to her being feted at the Women in Film and Television international achievement awards for excellence in film editing.

Do you think that, as a woman, you bring a special touch to your craft?
A great deal of what makes me an editor is what my mother taught me, and she would be very pleased. Editing is about having an artistic gift, but it’s also about hard work and patience, and helping men that are not very good at it (laughs), and a certain sensitivity to actors that I think is particularly feminine.

Is it those qualities that attracted Martin Scorsese to work with you?
Yes, I think so. He says that I bring humanity to his films. By that he means maybe I can see the ability in an actor more than he does. He lays it down…but I pull it out. We work very collaboratively and he’s just come to trust me over the years. Marty knows I’ll do the very best for the film and he relies on my perspective…the fact that I’m a little more distant from it than him.

So you’re completely comfortable disagreeing with him on certain issues?
Oh sure. We talk about that all the time. He’s the first person to see if something he thought is going to work one way, doesn’t. And he’s very open to a solution, and if he’s not…I just wait a little bit. Maybe two screenings on, he’ll see it. So I believe in giving him the film he shot first, and then I give him alternatives if I feel they’re necessary. He’s very good about that and he’s very tough on himself…he’s the hardest judge of his work of anybody in the world!

Did you always want to be an editor?
No, I did not. I wanted to become a diplomat and studied to do that and took the State Department exams, and they said to me ‘You’re way too liberal politically.’ I met Marty by accident when I went to New York University after my first editing job to do a summer course. It was really a miracle. If I had gone the year after, he wouldn’t have been there.

What’s your favorite film you have worked on?
I would have to say Raging Bull, because it was like my baby. It was the first major Hollywood feature film I had ever worked on…can you imagine something that strong? It was so stunning and beautifully done. I was just holding pure gold in my hands and working on the wonderful improvisations of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. But there are other ones that I’m just as proud of…I love them all for different reasons.

Is there any other film director you would like to work with?
I would have liked to work with my husband Michael Powell, but he wasn’t making films anymore…he was quite a bit older than me.

Do you think you’ll ever quit the business?
Gee, I don’t know…I hope to die in the traces (laughs). In (Elia Kazan’s 1976 feature) The Last Tycoon there’s a wonderful scene where the director and producer are sitting looking at a new cut of the movie, and after it’s over they say to their editor ‘We want you to make a change.’ And he’s sitting way down in the front, and he’s not answering. He had died during the screening. I always thought that’s so typical of an editor…they wouldn’t want to make a fuss during the screening. So I hope I go that way (laughs).

Where do you keep your Oscars?
I’m just in the process of refurbishing my New York apartment so I haven’t decided. But I don’t want them to be too visible from the front door, because when people deliver food, I don’t want them to think this is someone they can rip off!