Ridley Scott

Sir Ridley Scott was a set designer and TV commercial director before he became a famous film director. Scott studied film and arts at the West Hartlepool College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. He then began to work for BCC television and eventually making commercials. He soon left to pursue a career in films. His director debut came in 1977 when he directed The Duelists. But his breakout work wouldn’t come until his second film, when he was asked to direct a soon to be Sci-Fi/horror classic, Alien. The film was praised by critics and is hailed as one of the scariest film ever made. Scott directed another Sci-Fi film in his third try, Blade Runner (1982), a story that sets in a futuristic Los Angeles. His elaborate skill in visual effects would soon be his artistic signature. However, Scott’s next couple of films wasn’t very successful. So he decided to move away from the action genre and did a romantic triller in 1991, Thelma and Louise. The film was the talk of the country during the summer of that year and earned him his first Oscar nomination for Best Director. In 1993, he released the director’s cut for Blade Runner and is considered to be greatly improved from his original version. In 1995, he and his brother Tony Scott form a television production company called Scott Free Productions in Los Angeles. In 2000, Scott brought the epic sword fighting in the Roman Coliseum to life in Gladiator, which went on to get nominated for 12 Oscars and went on to win 5 of them. Although Scott didn't win Best Director, the film did win Best Picture. In 2001, he brought New York Times Bestseller, Hannibal, to live, the highly anticipated sequel to the Oscar winner Silence of the Lambs. Also in the same year, he directed Black Hawk Down, a trilling war drama that earned him another Oscar nomination for Best Director. Scott went back to television in 2005, as one of the executive producers of the show Numb3rs, a unique crime solving drama that involves a mathmatician who helps the police to solve crime. The show became a success on it's first year and it currently airs on Friday at 10 PM ET on CBS.