Ridley Scott Quotes

I had a quite unconventional childhood, in the sense that I traveled a lot and I went to 10 or 11 schools. I was completely confused academically, but wherever I went, I could paint. I painted an inordinate amount.

- Ridley Scott

The word 'religion' is only a label. What lies behind that, the most important thing of all, is the word 'faith'. You either have faith, or you don't have faith, or you have degrees of faith - and if you have degrees of faith, then you become agnostic. You're kind of in-between, or you're on the fence.

- Ridley Scott

I don't get attached to anything. I'm like a good antique dealer. I'm prepared to sell my most valuable table.

- Ridley Scott

In science fiction, we're always searching for new frontiers. We're drawn to the unknown.

- Ridley Scott

Some people like to do everything always the same thing. That's another way: To do the same thing.

- Ridley Scott

Good FBI officers are not noticeable. You would never look at them.

- Ridley Scott

Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?

- Ridley Scott

If you circle above Central Park at night in a helicopter, you're looking down at the most expensive real estate in the world. It's the American Monopoly board.

- Ridley Scott

When you're in the editing room, the dangerous thing is that it becomes like telling a joke again and again and again. Eventually, the joke starts to not be funny. So you have to be careful that you're not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

- Ridley Scott

I like Wadi Rum - it's the best view I've ever seen of what could be Mars.

- Ridley Scott

The great attraction to 'American Gangster' is these two great characters who are absolute paradoxes within their own sphere.

- Ridley Scott

I want a certificate that allows me to make as big a box office as possible.

- Ridley Scott

The very first film I ever saw was a pirate movie called 'The Black Swan' with Tyrone Power. And I thought that was great stuff. Of course, in those days, Technicolor was really Technicolor; there was no such thing as desaturation. Everybody looked super suntanned.

- Ridley Scott

The Gulf of Mexico, they believe, is a huge asteroid. That was an impact zone, you know that? Yeah, for that big a thing to actually hit our globe, it would have had to adjusted the spin, the axis.

- Ridley Scott

When you think about it, 'Avatar' is almost completely an animated movie.

- Ridley Scott

Once, I got slaughtered after 'Blade Runner' by Pauline Kael: three pages of slaughter. I was so offended, I would never read any more press.

- Ridley Scott

It's hard writing screenplays.

- Ridley Scott

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

- Ridley Scott

Audiences are smarter than ever; they know if filmmakers cheat an environment.

- Ridley Scott

'The Man In High Castle' is one of Dick's most imaginative and captivating works, and certainly one of my favorites.

- Ridley Scott

'The Duellists' won Cannes, but Paramount didn't know how to release a film about two guys in bizarre breeches, waving swords around. I actually think it's a pretty good Western.

- Ridley Scott

Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of these scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.

- Ridley Scott

For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.

- Ridley Scott

I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds.

- Ridley Scott

People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.

- Ridley Scott

I had been very impressed with the voiceover of 'Apocalypse Now,' with Martin Sheen's voice. That was a great voiceover; it really internalized the Martin Sheen character, who was essentially fairly low key and didn't say a lot during the whole movie. But he thought a lot, so I always thought that was really great.

- Ridley Scott

When you're doing a big movie, you're gone for 10 months to a year.

- Ridley Scott

Technology will need to make many more huge leaps before one can ever view films with the level of picture and sound quality many film lovers demand without having to slide a disc into a player, especially with the technical requirements of today's 3D movies.

- Ridley Scott

I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.

- Ridley Scott

I do a pretty good job at casting actually.

- Ridley Scott

How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant?

- Ridley Scott

Try writing a book, dude. That's difficult.

- Ridley Scott

'Alien' is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think.

- Ridley Scott

What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be.

- Ridley Scott

I'm agnostic because I went through the usual process of parents insisting you go to church, and yet they didn't. So there's me, sitting in the chairs, thinking, 'Jeez, why am I here? I'd rather be playing tennis, seriously.'

- Ridley Scott

In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.

- Ridley Scott

If you go back and look, a completely underrated film is 'Quest for Fire.' That was one of the most genius, simplistic but incredibly sophisticated notion of what it was. The evolution of that was just fantastic.

- Ridley Scott

I think one of the successes of Gladiator is how we manage to turn on a dime the character from one thing to another where you believe he is one thing and he is something very different.

- Ridley Scott

But Gladiator is one of my favourite adventures because I really loved going into the world. I loved creating the world to the degree where you could almost smell it.

- Ridley Scott

It's very difficult to find good scripts in Hollywood any more.

- Ridley Scott

I think there's nothing worse than inertia. You can be inert and study your navel, and gradually fall off the chair. I think the key is to keep flying.

- Ridley Scott

Stanley Kubrick's '2001' was the door that opened up the possibility of science fiction for me. Everything else up to then was fine, but didn't quite work for me.

- Ridley Scott

I am a science fiction enthusiast, really, deep down.

- Ridley Scott

'Alien' is a landmark. One of the really good science-fiction films.

- Ridley Scott

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

- Ridley Scott

Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

- Ridley Scott

Doing science fiction at a high level is tricky. It's really tricky.

- Ridley Scott

One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.

- Ridley Scott

From time to time, there are people in the film industry who appear on the horizon with a unique vision. South African director Neill Blomkamp is one of those rare people.

- Ridley Scott

I like a film such as 'American Beauty,' and I like 'Spider-Man.'

- Ridley Scott

I've got many letters from Muslim organizations thanking me for making 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

- Ridley Scott

I think Phil Dick was particularly interesting in that, first of all, he was a very modern man and a very modern thinker, but I don't know what demons drove him.

- Ridley Scott

There's a big film industry in Egypt, and quite a big one in Syria, and there's a big Muslim community in Paris.

- Ridley Scott

'Blade Runner' was a comic strip. It was a comic strip! It was a very dark comic strip. Comic metaphorically.

- Ridley Scott

The people who really resurrected 'Blade Runner' was 'MTV.'

- Ridley Scott

I think over time I've learned to stop being a screamer and get interactive; otherwise, you get killed in Hollywood. I stopped being a screamer shortly after 'Blade Runner,' kicking doors and things like that, because I wasn't actually getting anywhere.

- Ridley Scott

Business fascinates me. It's very creative.

- Ridley Scott

The U.K. has to keep investing in new technology, skills, and infrastructure to keep pace with international competition.

- Ridley Scott

I used to agonise over what to do next, but now I'm making a movie a year. It's insane, but it's only a movie after all. You just hang in there, and occasionally you might make something which you can call art... briefly.

- Ridley Scott

On rare occasions, Dad used to reminisce about when he met Eisenhower and how Churchill would pop in, in the late hours of the evening or night, carrying a cigar, when he'd obviously had a good dinner.

- Ridley Scott

Churchill strikes a note in my life because my father worked on Mulberry Harbour, which was the code name for the temporary concrete harbours which were towed across the Channel to make the D-day landings in France possible.

- Ridley Scott

The 3D world allows you to engage even more with a film because you're somehow drawn into the landscape or the universe of that scene. Even when it's two people talking at a table, you feel like you're a third party.

- Ridley Scott

I'm used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo.

- Ridley Scott

If studios don't get their money back, we don't have any movies. So it is important that films are successful, and I am fully supportive of that because I'm not just a director, I'm also not stupid. I've been in this business long enough and, to a certain extent, I'm a businessman; I know the importance of that.

- Ridley Scott

In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.

- Ridley Scott

And I maintain good relationships with all the studios so I've never been bullied into any cut, frankly.

- Ridley Scott

Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.

- Ridley Scott

There's still a lot of investors wondering what to invest in. And, of course, I think entertainment looks attractive when you read the few films that make these insane amounts of money. What they don't know is they don't always do that.

- Ridley Scott

Digital is a different world because you are sitting at home and a hi tech piece of equipment today is within reach of most people, so they are watching a pretty hi tech version of whatever you've done.

- Ridley Scott

If you ever have a kid who doesn't know what to do, stick him in art school. It's amazing what evolves.

- Ridley Scott

If you believe, you believe; if you're faithful, you're faithful. I don't care what your religion is. The same if you're agnostic. That should be accepted, too.

- Ridley Scott

I'm a yarn teller. My job is to engage you as much as I can and as often as I can.

- Ridley Scott

I've always avoided sequels, unless I felt there was something fresh.

- Ridley Scott

As soon as you're at the higher levels of budgeting, you've got to get the film made, and the only way to support the film is to have actors who can support the budget.

- Ridley Scott

'Prometheus' was a great experience for me.

- Ridley Scott

I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.

- Ridley Scott

I don't go to the cinema often anymore - I'd rather just pop in a disk and get the biggest monitor you've got, and if the quality is superb, I can watch a film, and if I don't like it I can pop it out.

- Ridley Scott

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

- Ridley Scott

They say, 'TV is not a captive audience,' but it definitely is. You can easily switch off the bloody television.

- Ridley Scott

That's part of the policy: To keep switching gears.

- Ridley Scott

As a filmmaker, deep blacks are essential, and in my experience, no technology captures those attributes as well as Plasma.

- Ridley Scott

Everyone is tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshiping the same god.

- Ridley Scott

The word 'comedy' implies slapstick.

- Ridley Scott

Do what you haven't done is the key, I think.

- Ridley Scott

The key thing is you can be the only person, your own critic.

- Ridley Scott

Oddly enough, I find it quite engaging to be working with a female when I'm directing. It's kind of interesting.

- Ridley Scott

You always worry before your movie opens that no one is going to come out.

- Ridley Scott

Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.

- Ridley Scott

I've got a terrible knee from too much tennis.

- Ridley Scott

If 'formulaic' is somebody who is unlikely to succeed starting down a process and succeeding - then isn't that what most films are about? And art films are about people who aren't likely to succeed and then don't succeed.

- Ridley Scott

It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast.

- Ridley Scott

And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.

- Ridley Scott

I always shoot my movies with score as certainly part of the dialogue. Music is dialogue. People don't think about it that way, but music is actually dialogue. And sometimes music is the final, finished, additional dialogue. Music can be one of the final characters in the film.

- Ridley Scott

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

- Ridley Scott

The idea of flying in general does not appeal to me. I can barely understand why people want to fly at all, other than that it's occasionally necessary.

- Ridley Scott

By going to a preview, a director becomes insidiously infected by the process, so by the end of it, you're thinking, 'It may be a bit too long.'

- Ridley Scott

On 'Black Hawk Down,' I was employing 1,000 Muslims. 'Kingdom of Heaven,' same deal except bigger, probably 1,500 Muslims.

- Ridley Scott

A word on 'Kingdom of Heaven:' if you get the four-disc set, which is 3 hr. 8 min., you'll see why it's such a good movie. It was a real passion project, and it's the film I'm most proud of. I think it was treated incredibly unfairly.

- Ridley Scott

I made the mistake of saying I was an atheist at one point, when I was doing 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

- Ridley Scott

I'm a reader. I found out that, whether you're a studio head or a director, you must read your own material. You can't rely on readers.

- Ridley Scott

When you're at a certain point in your time - age, that is, when you're older - you start to realize that, actually, what you leave behind you does count, and so you start to become fundamentally aware of your own destiny, which sounds very grand. It's not grand at all, actually.

- Ridley Scott

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

- Ridley Scott

I love designing, and I still do it.

- Ridley Scott

Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't part of the dynamic of the story.

- Ridley Scott

When you're watching a documentary, the danger is to romanticize.

- Ridley Scott

I was one of those kids who tended to stay in on Saturday nights. My mother used to come and say, 'Why don't you go to the dance with the boys?' And I'm going, 'No, I'm perfectly happy.' I think my parents thought I was definitely weird.

- Ridley Scott

I'm an Englishman who did a film on Mogadishu, 'Black Hawk Down.'

- Ridley Scott

What's interesting to me about Moses isn't the big stuff that everybody knows.

- Ridley Scott

Egypt was - as it is now - a confluence of cultures, as a result of being a crossroads geographically between Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

- Ridley Scott

The time it would take me to write a screenplay it would take me the time to make two films. I would rather make the movies, and I'm a better moviemaker than I would be writer.

- Ridley Scott

Sometimes, scenes are great without any music at all.

- Ridley Scott

Sacred texts give no specific depiction of God, so for centuries, artists and filmmakers have had to choose their own visual depiction.

- Ridley Scott

Because I was a kid from north of England, the only films I had access to was not alternative cinema, which in those days would be foreign cinema; I would be looking at all the Hollywood movies that arrived at my High Street.

- Ridley Scott

I didn't want to go down the route of spending a year of my life making a movie that would never be seen. I may as well go down a route making a film that a lot of people will see, which is the whole idea behind cinema.

- Ridley Scott

I want to return to the epic idea of the grand, big Western, in the sense that 'The Searchers' was.

- Ridley Scott

Yes, obviously, there's this degree of wanting people to accept other people faiths and philosophies.

- Ridley Scott

People have no idea how physically tough doing a film is.

- Ridley Scott

Unfortunately, we don't seem to learn from history, do we? And you'd think we would.

- Ridley Scott

I unfortunately do suffer for my art.

- Ridley Scott

I try to make films, not movies. I've never liked the expression 'movie', but it sounds elitist to say that.

- Ridley Scott

Actors are all different. They're not all volatile. Some are sweet, some are volatile, but what is fundamentally in there is something that has to be paid attention to, in that they are, I would say, needy.

- Ridley Scott

Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape.

- Ridley Scott

There are some moments that are pretty distressing in 'Prometheus.' In fact, the last hour is pretty distressing.

- Ridley Scott

I was always amazed about how much I could finally squeeze into a thirty second commercial.

- Ridley Scott

Technology continues to bring us wondrous advances in filmmaking to improve how we view movies.

- Ridley Scott

Sometimes you can do a TV show on a subject you just can't do in film. Either it's too long or studios will perceive it as not being commercial.

- Ridley Scott

MPC, Moving Picture Company, they're really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.

- Ridley Scott

We can't terraform yet, but we know it exists.

- Ridley Scott

There's some politicians who still seriously believe that we haven't got global warming.

- Ridley Scott

Sometimes I find I'm wearing a divided, split brain in terms of drama and humor.

- Ridley Scott

I don't ever blink, honestly.

- Ridley Scott

I've gradually realised that what I do best is universes. And I shouldn't be afraid of that.

- Ridley Scott

I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.

- Ridley Scott

Far from being dead, physical media has years of life left and must be preserved because there is no better alternative.

- Ridley Scott

I think sci-fi can easily be PG.

- Ridley Scott

Sci-fi films are as dead as westerns.

- Ridley Scott

I grew up in the North of England at a time when Stirling Moss was a hero. Everyone wanted to be a racing driver.

- Ridley Scott

I've seen some of James Cameron's work, and I've got to go 3D.

- Ridley Scott

There has to be absolute trust between the tiger and its master, but its master must be the master - there must be no mistake about that.

- Ridley Scott

You could have ten scientists in this room. You could ask them all: 'Who's religious?' About three to four will put their hands up.

- Ridley Scott

You just don't know when you get all the paint across the canvas how it will turn out. When you step back after you've finished, you say, 'This one is not so good. This one is good.'

- Ridley Scott

My career seems to be a career of non-specific subjects which are all over the place.

- Ridley Scott

I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.

- Ridley Scott

Perhaps because of my background as a graphic designer, I'm drawn to rich and beautiful colors.

- Ridley Scott

I would make a film with a political point of view if I agreed with it, and even, perhaps, if I didn't.

- Ridley Scott

The great film editor is not a cutter, he's a storyteller, right?

- Ridley Scott

Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.

- Ridley Scott

Dad entered the Second World War like any other man, trying to do the right thing.

- Ridley Scott

I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload.

- Ridley Scott

Any period is fascinating: the more ancient, the better.

- Ridley Scott

I get so used to working with writers that my prime occupation is development.

- Ridley Scott

A hit for me is if I enjoy the movie, if I personally enjoy the movie.

- Ridley Scott

I'm fundamentally a positive person. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing some of the insane movies that I do.

- Ridley Scott

Fire is our first form of technology.

- Ridley Scott

I knew exactly what to do on Alien, it was funny.

- Ridley Scott

The digital and theatrical markets are two different marketplaces.

- Ridley Scott

I have a healthy competitive nature.

- Ridley Scott

The ego is there, but I'm learning to channel it.

- Ridley Scott

If I have to, I'll go and direct theater and talk till the cows come home.

- Ridley Scott

Cast is everything.

- Ridley Scott

I watch a lot of 'National Geographic.'

- Ridley Scott

If somebody's given me X amount of dollars to fulfill a dream, they've got every right to actually say something about it.

- Ridley Scott

When I started the original 'Alien,' Ripley wasn't a woman, it was a guy.

- Ridley Scott

I wanted 'Alien' to be all about claustrophobia.

- Ridley Scott

I tend to watch a lot of lower-budget movies to find out what's doing down there and find out who's coming up.

- Ridley Scott

I would like to have a bit of a break and do a comedy.

- Ridley Scott

I am in a constant stage of development.

- Ridley Scott

I think there are a lot of men who feel they're being emasculated by having the woman be in charge; I've never had that problem.

- Ridley Scott

Conscience, the power of conscience, can unearth all kinds of things.

- Ridley Scott

I started late. I didn't make my first movie until I was 40.

- Ridley Scott

The story of 'Prometheus' is the idea that if you're given a gift from the gods, do not abuse it, and do not think you can compete.

- Ridley Scott

It doesn't matter how much faith you have or don't have. I just don't buy the idea that we're alone. There's got to be some form of life out there.

- Ridley Scott

The best stories come out of the truth.

- Ridley Scott

I'm a very practical person.

- Ridley Scott

Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it.

- Ridley Scott