Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is an English filmmaker. His work includes science fiction, crime, and historical epic films, with an atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. Scott is the eighth-highest-grossing director of all time, with his films grossing a cumulative $5 billion worldwide. He has received numerous accolades including two Golden Globe Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards, as well as nominations for four Academy Awards, eight BAFTA Awards, and a Grammy Award. He has also been honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement in 2018 and the Academy Honorary Award in 2026. Scott was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, and appointed a Knight Grand Cross by King Charles III in 2024.
An alumnus of the Royal College of Art in London, Scott began his career in television as a designer and director before moving into advertising as a director of commercials. He made his film directorial debut with The Duellists (1977) and gained wider recognition with his next film, Alien (1979). Though his films range widely in setting and period, they showcase memorable imagery of urban environments, spanning 2nd-century Rome in Gladiator (2000) and its 2024 sequel, 12th-century Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), medieval England in Robin Hood (2010), ancient Memphis in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), contemporary Mogadishu in Black Hawk Down (2001), futuristic cityscapes of Los Angeles in Blade Runner (1982), and extraterrestrial worlds in Alien, Prometheus (2012), The Martian (2015) and Alien: Covenant (2017).
Scott has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director three times, for Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down, while also receiving a nomination for Best Picture for The Martian. In 1995, both Scott and his brother Tony received a British Academy Film Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. Three of his films—Alien, Blade Runner, and Thelma & Louise—have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being considered "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In a 2004 BBC poll, Scott was ranked 10 on the list of most influential people in British culture.
Scott also works in television, and has earned 10 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He won twice, for Outstanding Television Film for the HBO film The Gathering Storm (2002) and for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special for the History Channel's Gettysburg (2011). He was Emmy-nominated for RKO 281 (1999), The Andromeda Strain (2008), and The Pillars of the Earth (2010). Along with Hugh Hudson, Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, and brother Tony, Scott was part of the "Adland Five" of British directors operating in the late 1970s and early 1980s who first established themselves in the advertising world, before going on to Hollywood success. The group's influence has been cited by the likes of Christopher Nolan and Christopher Frayling.
Scott was born on 30 November 1937 in South Shields, the second of three sons to Francis ("Frank") Percy Scott, a partner in a commercial shipping business based in Newcastle who would serve as a Colonel in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War, and Elizabeth, née Williams, a miner's daughter. His great-uncle Dixon Scott was a pioneer of the cinema chain and opened many cinemas around Tyneside. One of his cinemas, Tyneside Cinema, is still operating in Newcastle and is the last remaining newsreel cinema in the UK.
Born two years before the Second World War began, Scott was brought up in a military family. His father, a senior officer in the Royal Engineers, was absent for most of his early life. His elder brother, Frank, joined the Merchant Navy when he was still young and the pair had little contact. During this time the family moved around; they lived in Cumberland as well as other areas of England, in addition to Wales and Germany, where Colonel Scott was part of the post-war Allied Control Council. After the war the Scott family moved back to County Durham and eventually settled on Teesside.
His interest in science fiction began by reading the novels of H. G. Wells as a child. He was also influenced by science-fiction films such as It! The Terror from Beyond Space, The Day the Earth Stood Still and Them! He said these films "kind of got [him] going a little" but his attention was not fully caught until he saw Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, about which he said, "Once I saw that, I knew what I could do." He went to Grangefield Grammar School in Stockton-on-Tees and obtained a diploma in design at West Hartlepool College of Art. While in Stockton during the mid 1950s, he played for Stockton Rugby Football Club. The industrial landscape in West Hartlepool would later inspire visuals in Blade Runner, with Scott stating, "There were steelworks adjacent to West Hartlepool, so every day I'd be going through them, and thinking they're kind of magnificent, beautiful, winter or summer, and the darker and more ominous it got, the more interesting it got."
Scott went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London, contributing to the college magazine ARK and helping to establish the college film department. For his final show he made a black and white short film, Boy and Bicycle, starring both his younger brother and his father, which was later released on the 'Extras' section of The Duellists DVD. It was shot in 1960 or 1961 entirely in West Hartlepool. and Seaton Carew. In February 1963 Scott was named in the title credits as designer for the BBC television programme Tonight.
After graduation in 1963 he secured a job as a trainee set designer with the BBC, leading to work on the popular television police series Z-Cars and science fiction series Out of the Unknown. He was originally assigned to design the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks, which would have entailed realising the serial's eponymous alien creatures. Shortly before he was due to start work, a schedule conflict meant he was replaced by Raymond Cusick. In 1965 he began directing episodes of television series for the BBC, only one of which, an episode of Adam Adamant Lives!, is available commercially.
In 1968 Ridley and his younger brother, Tony Scott, who would also go on to become a film director, founded Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a film and commercial production company. Working alongside Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and cinematographer Hugh Johnson, Ridley Scott made many commercials at RSA during the 1970s, including a 1973 Hovis bread advertisement, "The Bike Ride" (underscored by the slow movement of Dvořák's "New World" symphony rearranged for brass), filmed in Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset. A nostalgia-themed television advert that captured the public imagination, it was voted the UK's favourite commercial in a 2006 poll. In the 1970s the Chanel No. 5 brand needed revitalisation, having run the risk of being labelled as mass market and passé. Directed by Scott in the 1970s and 1980s, Chanel television commercials were inventive mini-films with production values of surreal fantasy and seduction, which "played on the same visual imagery, with the same silhouette of the bottle."
Five members of the Scott family are directors and all have worked for RSA. His brother Tony was a successful film director whose career spanned more than two decades; his sons, Jake and Luke, are both acclaimed directors of commercials, as is his daughter, Jordan Scott. Jake and Jordan both work from Los Angeles; Luke is based in London. In 1995 Shepperton Studios was purchased by a consortium headed by Ridley and Tony Scott, which extensively renovated the studios while also expanding and improving its grounds.
The Duellists (1977) marked Ridley Scott's first feature film as director. Shot in continental Europe, it was nominated for the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and won an award for Best Debut Film. The Duellists had limited commercial impact internationally. Based on Joseph Conrad's short story "The Duel" and set during the Napoleonic Wars, it follows two French Hussar officers, D'Hubert and Feraud (Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel) whose quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter extended feud spanning fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. The film has been acclaimed for providing a historically authentic portrayal of Napoleonic uniforms and military conduct. The 2013 release of the film on Blu-ray coincided with the publication of an essay on the film in a collection of scholarly essays on Scott.