Ridley Scott Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ridley Scott.
Famous Quotes By 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
Harrison is very much part of this one, but really it's about finding him; he comes in in the third act. — 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
I'm fundamentally a positive person. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing some of the insane movies that I do. — 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
I always say to people when I'm trying to get something going, bringing on other producers or other directors, "You can think of 95 reasons why not to make a movie. You've got to address why you want to make the movie and get it done. Just do it." I tend to live by that rule. — 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
I love different themes, different venues, different movies. I love to jump about and tackle different subjects. I have no intellectual master plan. — 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
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 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
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
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 going into space would be like going deep into the ocean, like 5,000 meters down. When you go down that far, it's just awfully black. There's not much there except mud and some particles. I imagine space would be a similar thing. The only difference is you're hoping to bump into some sort of intelligent extraterritorial being. — 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
That's a heavy word, but picking up a newspaper every day, how can you not despair at what's happening in the world, and how we're represented as human beings? The disappointments and corruption are dismaying at every level. And the biggest source of evil is of course religion. Religions are tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshipping the same god. — 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
Everyone sniggered because I was going to do a sandal and toga movie. But I knew exactly how to do it and I know how to make Robin Hood. — 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
Technology continues to bring us wondrous advances in filmmaking to improve how we view movies. — Ridley Scott
I don't ever blink, honestly. — 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
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
Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find? — 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
Some actors - you work with them once and don't even think about working with them again. — Ridley Scott
How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant? — 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
They say, 'TV is not a captive audience,' but it definitely is. You can easily switch off the bloody television. — Ridley Scott
I've got a terrible knee from too much tennis. — Ridley Scott
As I'm getting older, I want to make sure every film I do really counts. — 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
If we had written Tristan in the true vernacular the audience would have been very small. It wouldn't have even been Shakespearean. It would have been so Celtic you wouldn't understand what was going on. — Ridley Scott
In science fiction, we're always searching for new frontiers. We're drawn to the unknown. — Ridley Scott
I do a pretty good job at casting actually. — Ridley Scott
When you think about it, 'Avatar' is almost completely an animated movie. — Ridley Scott
Some people like to do everything always the same thing. That's another way: To do the same thing. — Ridley Scott
Any period is fascinating: the more ancient, the better. — Ridley Scott
There's some politicians who still seriously believe that we haven't got global warming. — Ridley Scott
I knew exactly what to do on Alien, it was funny. — Ridley Scott
Fire is our first form of technology. — 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
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
I am a science fiction enthusiast, really, deep down. — Ridley Scott
You don't really know what you're going to get until you're actually in Abbey Road. That's where I did all the music, in The Beatles' place. — Ridley Scott
I've got many letters from Muslim organizations thanking me for making 'Kingdom of Heaven.' — Ridley Scott
Sci-fi films are as dead as westerns. — Ridley Scott
The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right. — Ridley Scott
Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it. — Ridley Scott
I'm just trying to think what other sequels there were. There was the James Bond movies and not many. I think sequels have become a recent idea of franchising. — Ridley Scott
Well, not totally because over the years I've probably done 2,700 commercials. So, I'm always ticking. And in a way that was a huge advantage because I was able to take my time choosing my film subjects because I wasn't relying on the fear of not being able to work. — 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
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
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
I want to return to the epic idea of the grand, big Western, in the sense that 'The Searchers' was. — 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
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
There is an access to ... people can now afford very high quality technology, where you can have a very good reproduction of a large picture on a large screen at home. People go out less. I don't know that it's going to stay that way but, I think also, we've got to start making better movies. — Ridley Scott
Yes, obviously, there's this degree of wanting people to accept other people faiths and philosophies. — 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
Sometimes I find I'm wearing a divided, split brain in terms of drama and humor. — 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
'Prometheus' was a great experience for me. — Ridley Scott
I started late. I didn't make my first movie until I was 40. — Ridley Scott
The word 'comedy' implies slapstick. — Ridley Scott
I watch a lot of 'National Geographic.' — 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
Never be put off by anything because failure teaches you something. — Ridley Scott
The ego is there, but I'm learning to channel it. — Ridley Scott
There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste. — 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 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 don't get attached to anything. I'm like a good antique dealer. I'm prepared to sell my most valuable table. — 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
I do like to make films with a political theme, but sometimes it's nice simply to make people laugh. That's the hardest thing to do in fact. — Ridley Scott
Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict. — 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
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
Audiences are less intrigued, honestly, by battle. They're more intrigued by human relations. If you're making a film about the trappings of the period, and you're forgetting that human relationships are the most engaging part of the storytelling process, then you're in trouble. — 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
I've always avoided sequels, unless I felt there was something fresh. — 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
A hit for me is if I enjoy the movie, if I personally enjoy the movie. — Ridley Scott
When I started the original 'Alien,' Ripley wasn't a woman, it was a guy. — Ridley Scott
Doing science fiction at a high level is tricky. It's really tricky. — 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
What's interesting to me about Moses isn't the big stuff that everybody knows. — Ridley Scott
Blade Runner was the godfather of all these fantastic movies that occur today. What's frustrating is that we're short of really great writing and great ideas. Blade Runner was full of them. — Ridley Scott
As a filmmaker, deep blacks are essential, and in my experience, no technology captures those attributes as well as Plasma. — Ridley Scott
I made the mistake of saying I was an atheist at one point, when I was doing 'Kingdom of Heaven.' — Ridley Scott
The U.K. has to keep investing in new technology, skills, and infrastructure to keep pace with international competition. — Ridley Scott
I love designing, and I still do it. — 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
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
Most people need the money all the time. — Ridley Scott