Oscar Profile #258: Ridley Scott

Born November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Northumberland (now Tyne and Wear), England, Ridley Scott was the middle of three sons of an officer in the Royal Engineers. While he intended to follow his father into the Army, his older brother Frank having gone into the Royal Nany, his father encouraged him to pursue his interest in the arts instead. Educated at London’s Royal College of Art, he joined the BBC in 1962 as a trainee set designer. Upset at the low financial rewards at the BBC, he formed an advertising firm with his younger brother Tony in 1967and spent ten years making some of England’s best known and best loved TV commercials. He made his feature film debut with 1977’s Napoleonic drama, The Duellists.

Scott’s next two films were the science-fiction classics, Alien in 1979 and Blade Runner in 1982, followed by the science-fiction flop, Legend in 1985. He then turned successfully to other genres including the 1987 mystery, Someone to Watch Over Me, the 1989 actioner Black Rain and the 1991 female centric actioner Thelma & Louise for which he received his first Oscar nomination.

1992’s 1492: Conquest of Everest about the aftermath of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America was not successful, but 1996’s high adventure White Squall and 1997’s female centric war movie, G.I. Jane were. Then came 2000’s throwback to the sand-and-sandal epics of the 1950s, Gladiator which won an Oscar for Best Picture and provided Scott with his second nomination for Best Director.

2001’s sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal was a major success and the same year’s fact-based war drama, Black Hawk Down was both a critical success and box-office juggernaut that earned Scott his third Oscar nomination for Best Director. 2003’s film about the confidence racket, Matchbook Men was well-received but 2005’s film about the medieval crusades, Kingdom of Heaven didn’t find its audience until its DVD release. 2006’s romantic comedy set in the French vineyards, A Good Year was a flop, but 2007’s gangster film, American Gangster was a major success. 2008’s CIA drama, Body of Lies, his 2010 take on Robin Hood and his 2012 return to science fiction, Prometheus had more detractors than fans. His 2013 mini-series for Showtime set in The Vatican has never seen the light of day. His 2014 crime thriller, The Counselor and the same year’s reimagining of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments as Exodus: Gods and Kings were critical and box-office flops, but 2015’s science-fiction comedy-drama, The Martian is his greatest critical and commercial success in years.

When not directing films, Scott is busy producing other directors’ film and TV projects, including TV’s The Good Wife which he co-produced with his borther Tony who died in 2012. Scott, who will be 78 in November, shows no signs of slowing down. In is in pre-production on both a TV series and another Alien sequel, Alien: Paradise Lost. He is also rumored to be working on a sequel to Prometheus.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

ALIEN (1979)

One of the greatest science fiction/horror films ever made and the start of a franchise that is still churning out sequels, this was the film that established Scott as one of the titans of modern filmmaking. Not only are the Oscar winning special effects unforgettable, so are the full dimensional characters brought to life by his thrilling cast, among them Sigourney Weaver who would show up in the first three sequels as well as Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. It was followed three years later by another science fiction masterpiece, The Blade Runner. Both gained even more fans with the director’s cuts of the films released on DVD.

THELMA & LOUISE (1991)

Scott was always an advocate for strong women’s roles in his films, none more so than this celebrated road movie in which a waitress and a put-upon housewife shoot a rapist and take to the open road in a 1966 Thunderbird. The film was nominated for six Oscars and won one for Best Original Screenplay. Scott received his first nomination for Best Director and stars Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis were nominated for Best Actress along with nods for Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Sarandon and Davis jointly won the year’s first award for Best Actress from the National Board of Review and came in again jointly in second place in the voting by the New York Film Critics.

GLADIATOR (2000)

So-called sword-and-sandal epics had been popular at least since 1932’s The Sign of the Cross, but not taken seriously by critics and Oscar voters until 1959’s Ben-Hur and 1960’s Spartacus. The only similar contemporaneous film was the surprise 1995 Oscar winner, Braveheart, but Gladiator received better reviews and was less a surprise Oscar winner for Best Picture, earning Scott his second Best Director nomination. Russell Crowe won as Best Actor for his portrayal of the Roman General who seeks revenge as a gladiator on the new Emperor Commodos (Oscar nominated Joaquin Phoenix) for the murder of his wife and son.

BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001)

The Battle of Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War of 1993 was the backdrop for Mark Bowden’s 1999 book, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War which became the subject of the film which earned Scott his third Oscar nomination for Best Director. The film about the U.S. Rangers’ search for two downed pilots won Oscars for Best Editing and Best Sound and was also nominated for Best Cinematography. Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, William Fichtner, Sam Shepard, Hugh Dancy, Ron Eldard, Ioan Gruffudd, Tom Guiry, Jason Isaacs, Zeljko Ivanek, Jeremy Piven, Tom Hardy and Orlando Bloom are among the stars of the film that been heralded as one of the best war movies of all time.

THE MARTIAN (2015)

After years of hits and misses, Scott finally has his first bona fide international success since Black Hawk Down with this well-regarded science fiction film starring Matt Damon as an astronaut presumed dead and left behind to fend for himself on Mars after a fierce storm has caused the evacuation of his crew. The Robinson Crusoe aspects of his survival are nicely balanced with an Apollo 13 style effort to rescue him from the red planet after many months on his own. Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kate Mara and Chiwetel Ejiofor lead the supporting cast in the film has many predicting it for a Best Picture Oscar and a Golden Globe Comedy award even though it is not technically a comedy.