Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English filmmaker. His work includes science fiction, crime, and historical epic films, with an atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. He ranks among the highest-grossing directors, with his films grossing a cumulative $5 billion worldwide. He has received many accolades, including the BAFTA Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in 2018, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, and appointed a Knight Grand Cross by King Charles III in 2024.
An alumnus of the Royal College of Art in London, Scott began his career in television as a designer and director before moving into advertising as a director of commercials. He made his film directorial debut with The Duellists and gained wider recognition with his next film, Alien. Though his films range widely in setting and period, they showcase memorable imagery of urban environments, spanning 2nd-century Rome in Gladiator and its 2024 sequel, 12th-century Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven, medieval England in Robin Hood, ancient Memphis in Exodus: Gods and Kings, contemporary Mogadishu in Black Hawk Down, futuristic cityscapes of Los Angeles in Blade Runner, and extraterrestrial worlds in Alien, Prometheus, The Martian and Alien: Covenant.
Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. Gladiator won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and he received a nomination in the same category for The Martian. In 1995, both Scott and his brother Tony received a British Academy Film Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. Scott's films Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise were each selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being considered "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In a 2004 BBC poll, Scott was ranked 10 on the list of most influential people in British culture. Scott also works in television, and has earned 10 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He won twice, for Outstanding Television Film for the HBO film The Gathering Storm and for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special for the History Channel's Gettysburg. He was Emmy-nominated for RKO 281, The Andromeda Strain, and The Pillars of the Earth.
Early life and education
Scott was born on 30 November 1937 in South Shields, to Francis Percy Scott, a partner in a commercial shipping business based in Newcastle who would serve as a Colonel in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War, and Elizabeth, née Williams, a miner's daughter. His great-uncle Dixon Scott was a pioneer of the cinema chain and opened many cinemas around Tyneside. One of his cinemas, Tyneside Cinema, is still operating in Newcastle and is the last remaining newsreel cinema in the UK.Born two years before the Second World War began, Scott was brought up in a military family. His father, a senior officer in the Royal Engineers, was absent for most of his early life. His elder brother, Frank, joined the Merchant Navy when he was still young and the pair had little contact. During this time the family moved around; they lived in Cumberland as well as other areas of England, in addition to Wales and Germany, where Colonel Scott was part of the post-war Allied Control Council. After the war the Scott family moved back to County Durham and eventually settled on Teesside.
His interest in science fiction began by reading the novels of H. G. Wells as a child. He was also influenced by science-fiction films such as It! The Terror from Beyond Space, The Day the Earth Stood Still and Them! He said these films "kind of got going a little" but his attention was not fully caught until he saw Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, about which he said, "Once I saw that, I knew what I could do." He went to Grangefield Grammar School in Stockton on Tees and obtained a diploma in design at West Hartlepool College of Art. While in Stockton during the mid 1950s, he played for Stockton Rugby Football Club. The industrial landscape in West Hartlepool would later inspire visuals in Blade Runner, with Scott stating, "There were steelworks adjacent to West Hartlepool, so every day I'd be going through them, and thinking they're kind of magnificent, beautiful, winter or summer, and the darker and more ominous it got, the more interesting it got."
Scott went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London, contributing to the college magazine ARK and helping to establish the college film department. For his final show he made a black and white short film, Boy and Bicycle, starring both his younger brother and his father, which was later released on the ‘Extras’ section of The Duellists DVD. In February 1963 Scott was named in the title credits as Designer for the BBC television programme Tonight.
After graduation in 1963 he secured a job as a trainee set designer with the BBC, leading to work on the popular television police series Z-Cars and science fiction series Out of the Unknown. He was originally assigned to design the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks, which would have entailed realizing the serial's eponymous alien creatures. Shortly before he was due to start work, a schedule conflict meant he was replaced by Raymond Cusick. In 1965 he began directing episodes of television series for the BBC, only one of which, an episode of Adam Adamant Lives!, is available commercially.
File:Gold Hill, Shaftsbury, Dorset, England.JPG|right|thumb|Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, where Scott filmed the 1973 Hovis television commercial
In 1968 Ridley and his younger brother, Tony Scott, who would also go on to become a film director, founded Ridley Scott Associates, a film and commercial production company. Working alongside Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and cinematographer Hugh Johnson, Ridley Scott made many commercials at RSA during the 1970s, including a 1973 Hovis bread advertisement, "Bike Round", filmed in Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset. A nostalgia-themed television advert that captured the public imagination, it was voted the UK's favourite commercial in a 2006 poll. In the 1970s the Chanel No. 5 brand needed revitalisation, having run the risk of being labelled as mass market and passé. Directed by Scott in the 1970s and 1980s, Chanel television commercials were inventive mini-films with production values of surreal fantasy and seduction, which "played on the same visual imagery, with the same silhouette of the bottle."
Five members of the Scott family are directors and all have worked for RSA. His brother Tony was a successful film director whose career spanned more than two decades; his sons, Jake and Luke, are both acclaimed directors of commercials, as is his daughter, Jordan Scott. Jake and Jordan both work from Los Angeles; Luke is based in London. In 1995 Shepperton Studios was purchased by a consortium headed by Ridley and Tony Scott, which extensively renovated the studios while also expanding and improving its grounds.
Career
1970s: ''The Duellists'', ''Alien''
The Duellists marked Ridley Scott's first feature film as director. Shot in continental Europe, it was nominated for the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and won an award for Best Debut Film. The Duellists had limited commercial impact internationally. Based on Joseph Conrad's short story "The Duel" and set during the Napoleonic Wars, it follows two French Hussar officers, D'Hubert and Feraud whose quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter extended feud spanning fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. The film has been acclaimed for providing a historically authentic portrayal of Napoleonic uniforms and military conduct. The 2013 release of the film on Blu-ray coincided with the publication of an essay on the film in a collection of scholarly essays on Scott.Scott had originally planned next to adapt a version of Tristan and Iseult, but after seeing Star Wars, he became convinced of the potential of large-scale, effects-driven films. He accepted the job of directing Alien, the 1979 horror/science-fiction film that would win him international success. Scott made the decision to switch Ellen Ripley from the standard male action hero to a heroine. Ripley, who appeared in the first four Alien films, would become a cinematic icon. The final scene of John Hurt's character has been named by a number of publications as one of the most memorable in cinematic history. Filmed at Shepperton Studios in England, Alien was the sixth highest-grossing film of 1979, earning over $104 million worldwide. Scott was involved in the 2003 restoration and re-release of the original film. In promotional interviews at the time, Scott indicated he had been in discussions to make a fifth film in the Alien franchise. However, in a 2006 interview, Scott remarked that he had been unhappy about Alien: The Director's Cut, feeling that the original was "pretty flawless" and that the additions were merely a marketing tool. Scott later returned to Alien-related projects when he directed Prometheus and Alien: Covenant three decades after the original film's release.
1980s: ''Blade Runner'' and other films
After a year working on the film adaptation of Dune, and following the sudden death of his brother Frank, Scott signed to direct the film version of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Re-titled Blade Runner and starring Harrison Ford, the film was a commercial disappointment in theaters in 1982, and was criticised by Pauline Kael in the New Yorker who wrote "...Scott doesn't seem to have a grasp of how to use words as part of the way a movie moves. "Blade Runner" is a suspenseless thriller; it appears to be a victim of its own imaginative use of hardware and miniatures and mattes. At some point, Scott and the others must have decided that the story was unimportant; maybe the booming, lewd and sultry score by Chariots-for-Hire Vangelis that seems to come out of the smoke convinced them that the audience would be moved even if vital parts of the story were trimmed."In response to the review, Scott said: "...It was four pages of destruction. I never met her. I was so offended. I framed those pages and they've been in my office for 30 years to remind me there's only one critic that counts and that's you. I haven't read critiques ever since. Because if it's a good one, you can get a swollen head and forget yourself. And if it's a bad one, you're so depressed that it's debilitating." The movie is now widely regarded as a classic. In 1991, Scott's notes were used by Warner Bros. to create a rushed director's cut which removed the main character's voiceover and made a number of other small changes, including to the ending. Later Scott personally supervised a digital restoration of Blade Runner and approved what was called The Final Cut. This version was released in Los Angeles, New York City and Toronto cinemas on 5 October 2007, and as an elaborate DVD release in December 2007.
Today, Blade Runner is ranked by many critics as one of the most important and influential science fiction films ever made, partly thanks to its much imitated portraits of a future cityscape. It is often discussed along with William Gibson's novel Neuromancer as initiating the cyberpunk genre. Stephen Minger, stem cell biologist at King's College London, states, "It was so far ahead of its time and the whole premise of the story – what is it to be human and who are we, where we come from? It's the age-old questions." Scott has described Blade Runner as his "most complete and personal film".
In 1985, Scott directed Legend, a fantasy film produced by Arnon Milchan. Scott decided to create a "once upon a time" tale set in a world of princesses, unicorns and goblins, filming almost entirely inside the studio. Scott cast Tom Cruise as the film's hero, Jack; Mia Sara as Princess Lili; and Tim Curry as the Satan-horned Lord of Darkness. Scott had a forest set built on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, with trees 60 feet high and trunks 30 feet in diameter. In the final stages of filming, the forest set was destroyed by fire; Jerry Goldsmith's original score was used for European release, but replaced in North America with a score by Tangerine Dream. Rob Bottin provided the film's Academy Award-nominated special make-up effects, most notably Curry's red-coloured Satan figure. Despite a major commercial failure on release, the film has gone on to become a cult classic. The 2002 Director's Cut restored Goldsmith's original score.
Scott made Someone to Watch Over Me, a romantic thriller starring Tom Berenger and Mimi Rogers in 1987, and Black Rain, a police drama starring Michael Douglas and Andy García, shot partially in Japan. The latter was very well received at the box office. Black Rain was the first of Scott's six collaborations with the composer Hans Zimmer.