Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott is an English-born director and producer, best known for the films Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2001) and The Martian (2015). Scott began his career directing commercials and swiftly gained a reputation as a cinematic director, with much attention explicitly paid to set decoration. He has been nominated three times for Academy Awards but never won a statue.

Born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, England, Ridley Scott is a Sagittarius. In 2003 Scott was knighted for his contributions to cinema and bears the honorific title Sir.

Ridley Scott – His Religion

Sir Ridley is a self-admitted atheist, someone who doesn’t believe that there is a God. The director made this statement in 2013 while prepping his tale from the Old Testament, Exodus: Gods and Kings. “I’m an atheist, which is actually good, because I’ve got to convince myself the story works.” (1)

One year later, Scott was asked the same question again. This time, Scott answered in an agnostic way:

I’m not sure. I think there’s all kinds of questions raised… that’s such an exotic question. If we looked at the whole thing practically speaking, the big bang occurred and then we go through this evolution of millions, billions of years where, by coincidence, all the right biological accidents came out the right way. To an extent, that doesn’t make sense unless there was a controlling decider or mediator in all of that. So who was that? Or what was that? Are we one big grand experiment in the basic overall blink of the universe, or the galaxy? In which case, who is behind it? Maybe we’re an experiment which can last a billion years, but which is a blink in their terms and they can then say: ‘Right that didn’t work, let’s blow them up!'” (2)

Ridley Scott – His Relationships & Family

Scott has been married three times. His first marriage was to Felicity Heywood and lasted from 1964 to 1975. The couple had two sons together, Jake and Scott.

In 1979 Ridley married for a second time. The new woman in his life was advertising executive Sandy Watson. The marriage lasted for ten years, and produced a daughter named Jordan.

In 2015 Scott married again, this time to Costa Rican actress Giannini Facio. The two first became a couple in 2001 when Scott was shooting Hannibal.

Ridley is the middle son of three brothers. The eldest Scott son, Frank, passed away in 1980 due to skin cancer. Tony Scott, the youngest brother and also a respected film director, committed suicide in 2012 when he jumped from a Los Angeles bridge. It was rumored that Tony Scott had been suffering from cancer but the autopsy on his body showed no evidence of cancer present.

When Ridley received the phone call from Tony wife about his missing brother, it started what Ridley has called “the worst weekend of my life.” (3)

Ridley Scott – His Favorite Three Movies

When asked what his favorite three pictures were of all-time, Ridley Scott was, at first, hesitant to respond. “Oh God, that’s a very difficult question because I think you’d have to say what are your 20 great ones?” he answered.

Eventually, Scott gave three choices: Lawrence of Arabia by David Lean; Citizen Kane by Orson Welles; and The Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa. (2)

Sources:

1: The New York Times

2: BBC

3: The Telegraph

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