If you're hoping to find true, awe-inspiring spectacle on the big screen, you can always count on director Ridley Scott. He is perhaps best known for going to space and giving us the iconic creature in Alien, transporting us back to ancient Rome for Gladiator, and storming the war-torn streets of Mogadishu in Black Hawk Down. His latest movie is The Martian, starring Matt Damon as an astronaut mistakenly left for dead on Mars and mankind's mission to get him back.
Ridley Scott
Age: 77
Born: South Shields, England
Best Known For: Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Alien, Blade Runner, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Legend
First Feature Film:
The Duellists (1977), a lush drama about a feud between two French army officers during the Napoleonic wars. It earned Ridley Scott the Best Debut Film award at the Cannes Film Festival. The Duellists is one of Scott’s rarer seen films, but it did get a Shout! Factory Blu-ray release back in 2013.
His Breakout Film:
Alien (1979) was only his second feature film. It’s such an iconic movie that there’s not a ton new to say about it in 2015, other than it’s worth repeating that Alien was the second movie Scott ever made. Three decades later and it is still one of the best sci-fi movies ever made.
Bonus Trivia: Ridley Scott had planned on following up The Duellists with an adaptation of the 12th-century tale Tristan und Isolde, but then he saw Star Wars and it changed everything for him. He’s said in interviews over the years that George Lucas' movie was so stunning it made him feel miserable for a week knowing that he couldn’t match it with his planned version of Tristan und Isolde. So he abandoned that and journeyed into space with Alien, a movie four other directors passed on until it got to him.
Movies You Might Not Remember He Made:
Ridley Scott has had the kind of megahit career where his smaller movies would be other filmmakers' career highs. The movies people forget he directed (or have forgotten about) includes:
- Black Rain
- Thelma & Louise
- Hannibal
- Matchstick Men
- G.I. Jane
- Kingdom of Heaven
His Oscar History:
Ridley Scott’s first Academy Award nomination came in the form of Best Director for his seventh film, Thelma & Louise (He lost to Jonathan Demme and The Silence of the Lambs). Since then he’s been nominated for Best Director two more times; in 2001 for Gladiator (Steven Soderbergh won for Traffic, but Gladiator still won Best Picture) and in 2002 for Black Hawk Down (Ron Howard won for A Beautiful Mind).
Trivia:
Ridley Scott has directed 23 feature films, which cumulatively have grossed over $3 billion at the global box office.
Ridley and his brother Tony Scott (Top Gun, The Last Boy Scout, Man on Fire) founded the production company Scott Free, which produced not only the movies they directed but also The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The A-Team, The Grey, Stoker and the highly distinguished 1994 cinematic classic Monkey Trouble. Yes, Monkey Trouble would not exist without Ridley Scott.
He got a start in the entertainment industry by founding an advertising agency with his brother. Twenty years later Scott would take a break from his feature-film career to return to advertising by directing one of the most famous commercials in history, Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl spot announcing the Macintosh computer.
He was knighted by the queen of England in 2003. Apparently she is a very big fan of Monkey Trouble. (And probably a few of the movies Ridley Scott actually directed.)
