Martin Scorsese Was Kicked Out of Catholic Seminary ‘Because I Behaved Badly’

Martin Scorsese is reflecting on his early exit from a Catholic seminary school that would have set his life on a very different path.

Scorsese, 82, opens up about his lifelong fascination with religion in Rebecca Miller‘s new documentary Mr. Scorsese, which premiered at the New York Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 4. As the Taxi Driver director recalls in the series’ first episode, he was deeply moved when he first attended Catholic mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City around age seven and pursued religious education into his teenage years.

“There was a preparatory seminary, and that was on 85th Street somewhere. I did okay for the first few months, but something happened,” Scorsese shares in the new series. “I began to realize the world is changing. It was early rock and roll and the old world was dying out. I became aware of life around me. Falling in love or being attracted to girls; not that you’re acting out on it, but there were these feelings, and I suddenly realized it’s much more complicated than this. You can’t shut yourself off.”

“The idea of priesthood, to devote yourself to others, really, that’s what it’s about,” he adds in the documentary. “I realized I don’t belong there. And I tried to stay but they got my father in there and they told him, ‘Get him out of here.’ Because I behaved badly.”

While Scorsese does not elaborate on what he did that constituted him behaving “badly,” one of the director’s childhood friends, Joe Morale, says in the documentary that he felt Scorsese “had a heavy eye for the ladies” as a teenager.

Scorsese’s fascination with religion has remained a constant throughout his life and career, even though he did not follow through with his teenaged pursuit of the Catholic priesthood. The director has made multiple movies concerning Catholicism in his career, including 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ and 2017’s Silence, and he also made a movie about the life of the incumbent Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, with 1997’s Kundun.

In the series, Scorsese also cites a “kind of a mentor” he had in a Catholic priest named Francis Principe, whom he says inspired him to “get an education” and get out of his childhood neighborhood in New York City’s Lower East Side. 

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Scorsese’s relationship with his faith plays a major role in Mr. Scorsese, which tracks his entire filmmaking career and includes interviews with collaborators like Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mick Jagger, Robbie Robertson, Thelma Schoonmaker, Steven Spielberg, Sharon Stone, Jodie Foster, Paul Schrader, Margot Robbie, Cate Blanchett, Jay Cocks, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, as well as his three daughters Cathy, 59, Domenica, 49, and Francesca, 25, his wife Helen Morris and other childhood friends

“There were moments when I was an altar boy and I would ring the bells, that’s a moment where the whole world stops. The presence is there,” Scorsese says in the documentary. “The presence of God, right there.”

Following Mr. Scorsese‘s New York Film Festival premiere, the series begins streaming on Apple TV+ Oct. 17.