Short Biography

Sir Ridley Scott (born November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear) is a British Academy Award Nominated and Golden Globe, Emmy Award and BAFTA Award winning film director and producer known for his stylish visuals and an obsession for detail. His films include Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, Kingdom of Heaven, and American Gangster. His brother is fellow film director Tony Scott.

Scott left the BBC in 1968 and established a production company, Ridley Scott Associates, working with Sir Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Hugh Johnson and employing his younger brother, Tony. Having cut his teeth on UK television commercials in the 1970s — most notably the 1974 Hovis advert, "Bike Round" (New World Symphony), which was filmed in Shaftesbury, Dorset — he graduated to Hollywood, where he produced and directed a number of top box office films.

Initially Scott was hardly known as an actors` director, but he has become more receptive to ideas from his cast as his career has developed. Examples include Susan Sarandon`s suggestions that the character of Louise pack shoes in plastic bags in one scene of Thelma & Louise, and another where her character exchanges jewellery for a hat and other items, as well as Tim Robbins` collaboration with Scott and Susan Sarandon to rework the final scene with a more upbeat ending. Russell Crowe has commented, "I like being on Ridley`s set because actors can perform [...] and the focus is on the performers."[21]

On the other hand, he can be a demanding and difficult director to work for. He was nicknamed "Guvnor" in the Blade Runner production. Several crew members wore protest t-shirts with slogans such as "Yes Guvnor, my ass" and "Will Rogers never met Ridley Scott" in reference to Will Rogers` most famous quotation, "I never met a man I didn`t like".[22] This was mainly in response to the way that Scott directed his first American crew, which some considered too harsh.

His striking visual style, incorporating a detailed approach to production design and innovative, atmospheric lighting, has been influential on a subsequent generation of filmmakers — many of whom have simply imitated his style. Scott commonly uses slow pacing until the action sequences, which are characterised by frequent, rapid edits. Examples include Alien and Blade Runner; the LA Times critic Sheila Benson, for example, would call the latter "Blade Crawler" "because it`s so damn slow". Another commonly employed technique is his use of sound or music to build tension, as seen in Alien with hissing steam, beeping computers and the noise of the machinery in the space ship.

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