Ridley Scott has had a six-decade creative career and has been directing films for 46 years, spanning genres from science-fiction to historical epics. His movies have amassed a total of 41 Oscar nominations and nine wins, and have scored seven acting citations: Russell Crowe (“Gladiator”) and Matt Damon (“The Martian”) for Best Actor, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (“Thelma & Louise”) for Best Actress, Joaquin Phoenix (“Gladiator”) and Christopher Plummer (“All the Money in the World”) for Best Supporting Actor and Ruby Dee (“American Gangster”) for Best Supporting Actress. Now that he will reunite with Phoenix for his upcoming historical epic “Napoleon” set to release November 22, let’s take a closer look at his individual four Oscar nominations: three for Best Director and one for Best Picture.
After being behind the camera for famous sci-fi films like “Alien” and “Blade Runner,” Scott would get his first nomination in 1992 for the road adventure movie “Thelma & Louise” (1991), starring Sarandon and Davis as two friends who embark on a weekend road trip that takes a dark turn. Scott received a BAFTA and a Directors Guild Award mention to go with his Oscar turn, and along with two Best Actress bids for Sarandon and Davis, the film received noms for its cinematography, editing and screenplay, in a year when “The Silence of the Lambs” became the third film to win all five major Oscar categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay), with Scott losing to Jonathan Demme. However, screenwriter Callie Khouri won Best Original Screenplay for “Thelma & Louise” while “The Silence of the Lambs” took Best Adapted Screenplay.
Nine years later, Scott would return for directing the period historical movie “Gladiator” (2000) in truly one of the most peculiar Oscar seasons. Before this, the entire 1990s decade have all matched Best Picture and Best Director with the same film (with the exception of the year honoring 1998 when the anticipated “Saving Private Ryan” lost Best Picture to “Shakespeare in Love”). But for the year 2000, there was a clear split between the two at all of the precursor awards; even though “Gladiator” was winning the top category at the Golden Globes, BAFTA and Producers Guild of America Awards, Ang Lee was triumphing over Scott for directing “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” at all the aforementioned award ceremonies (with the DGA in substitute for the PGA). It was also the first year the BAFTA Awards were moved to take place before the Oscars.
Going into the 2001 Oscar night, it looked like there would be another split between the two top categories, but Scott was a contender to win Best Director for the epic movie with its large Colosseum battle sequences and visual style that would expectedly go along with “Gladiator’s” predicted Best Picture win. Instead, Steven Soderbergh pulled off a surprise victory for directing “Traffic,” having also been double nominated for “Erin Brokovich.” But “Gladiator” led the ceremony’s noms with 12, picking up Best Picture, Best Visual Effects, Best Costume Design, Best Sound (Mixing) and a surprise win for Crowe for Best Actor as the Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius avenging the murder of his father and rising from slavery as a gladiator.
The year after, Scott directed the war movie “Black Hawk Down” (2001) based on the Mark Bowden nonfiction book about the Black Hawk helicopter that was shot down during the Battle of Mogadishu. The film was a late release and came slowly into the conversation, missing Golden Globe and SAG, but receiving attention at the DGA, WGA (Writers Guild of America) and three citations at the BAFTA Awards for its cinematography, editing and sound, all of which it would later get at the Oscars including Best Director for Scott. It would end up succeeding in Best Sound (Mixing) and Best Editing for the win, while Scott came up short to Ron Howard for “A Beautiful Mind.”
His most recent nomination was for “The Martian” (2015) where he was cited for the first time as a producer for Best Picture. The science-fiction movie, adapted from the eponymous Andy Weir novel, stars Damon as an astronaut trying to survive on Mars and his rescue to bring him back to Earth. The awards journey for Scott began at the Golden Globes where he was noticed as a director and the movie won two awards for Best Comedy Film (the category placement joked about throughout the ceremony), and Damon for Best Actor in the same genre. “The Martian” and Scott continued to receive bids throughout the Critics Choice, PGA and DGA, but when Oscar nominations came, Scott was surprisingly left off the list for Best Director, the opposite of what happened at the BAFTAs where Scott was recognized, but the movie wasn’t. “The Martian” racked a total of seven nominations: Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Picture which Scott shared with producers Simon Kinberg, Michael Schaefer and Mark Huffam. “Spotlight” ended up taking the top prize that night.
Now Scott is back in contention with directing and producing Apple Original Films‘ “Napoleon,” starring Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby about Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power as the French political commander and his unstable relationship with his wife Empress Joséphine. Even though at the moment “Napoleon” is kept under the radar, Scott is a widely respected director with much prestige, with the movie having a grand scale production, not unlike his style, so it could turn up in various categories upon its release, including Best Director. “Napoleon” will be available through Sony Pictures Releasing on November 22, before later streaming on Apple TV+.
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