RIDLEY SCOTT

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Business fascinates me. It's very creative.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I have a healthy competitive nature.

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.

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.'

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I wanted 'Alien' to be all about claustrophobia.

Anybody who does 90 takes has a problem.

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

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.