In 1962, Ridley Scott shot his first film for £65, using a 16mm Bolex borrowed from the Royal College of Art. After writing the script himself, he returned to Hartlepool, where he recruited an untested teenager for the lead.
“The actor was a kid whose holiday I ruined by saying, ‘We’re going to make a movie,’” Scott tells The National. “That kid was Tony Scott.”
With their father driving, Ridley filmed from the boot of the car as Tony cycled through the streets. The resulting short, Boy and Bicycle, became Ridley’s first film and Tony’s first screen role. Years later, Tony gave his brother a framed still from it bearing the words: “We’ve come a long way.”
Tony went on to direct Top Gun, True Romance and Man on Fire before his death in 2012, aged 68. He and Ridley remained close throughout their careers and spoke almost every day. “People loved my brother. Yeah. More than me,” Ridley told GQ in 2025. “He was more outgoing and sweeter. I’m not so sweet.”
When they were young, Tony took Ridley climbing in the Yorkshire Dales. Ridley lost his grip on a rock face, leaving Tony holding his weight from above as the rope burnt through his hands. “I’ve got you,” Tony called down to him.
A similar relationship runs through The Dog Stars, out now in the UAE. Hig, played by Jacob Elordi, is a pilot who still believes there may be a better life beyond the abandoned airfield where they live, while Bangley, played by Josh Brolin, is a military survivalist who expects danger in every direction. They disagree about how to survive, although each has built his life around keeping the other alive. That bond reminded Scott of his relationship with Tony.
“My brother and I never tangled over anything,” he says. “I always tried to get him to say, ‘Listen, why don’t you do a period film? Why don’t you do science fiction?’ He never wanted to do that. Thank God he didn’t, because it would have been competition. We were never competitive.”
Fox originally sent Scott Mark L Smith’s adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, just as it had brought him The Martian years earlier.
“It’s really all in the writing, and the writer Mark is excellent. He did a fantastic adaptation of a very good book,” Scott says. “I think there was hesitation about doing another end-of-the-world film. I read it and thought, actually, it avoids all the pitfalls and zombies of the end-of-the-world thing. It was more about people than the end of the world, and about survival and rebuilding. I love that.”
The premise can be almost anything. “It can be about Mickey Mouse becoming Donald Duck,” Scott says. “If it’s visceral, I will be engaged.”
In a fallen world, the film asks its characters to decide what they want from the life that remains. “And that's everyone’s life,” Scott says. “I’ve thought and fought my way through a career that is very unlikely from where I came from. I was a kid in West Hartlepool who was very bad at school. I had a disastrous GCE. I got one O-level and therefore would never go to university because I couldn’t qualify.
“Instead, I went to art school because I was good at one thing: I could draw. At the time, art school was thought to be a dodge, and fundamentally you’d end up being an art teacher. I was planning to be an art teacher, but I was better than I realised and got into the Royal College of Art. As each door opened, I just went through it.”
In November, Scott will receive an honorary Oscar after three directing nominations and a Best Picture nomination as a producer of The Martian. While he’s proud of the honour, the main thing on his mind at 88 is to just keep making films.
“I’m lucky because I was born with the urge to do it, and not everyone has that,” he says. “The best words ever in advertising: Nike, ‘Just do it.’ I’m still just – do it. Stop talking about it. Just do it.”
