Tony Scott, Director Versed in Action, Dies at 68

LOS ANGELES — Tony Scott, the director of exuberant action films including “Top Gun” and “Unstoppable” and a prolific producer of television shows and commercials in partnership with his older brother, Ridley Scott, died on Sunday after jumping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge into the Los Angeles Harbor. He was 68.

Officials here opened a suicide investigation, and Ed Winter, an assistant chief of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, said on Monday that an autopsy was being performed. “We know that he jumped from the bridge, 200 feet in height,” Mr. Winter said in a telephone interview. “It was reported that several people witnessed him jump.”

Mr. Winter said Mr. Scott’s death was first reported at 12:47 p.m. on Sunday, though his body was not recovered until hours later. “There was one suicide note found in his office in Los Angeles, and a note found in his car, with names and contacts,” he said.

Mr. Scott’s death shocked and mystified friends and colleagues.

“I just worked with him, sharp as a button and having fun,” said Fay Greene, an associate who had recently been with Mr. Scott on the set of a Pepsi commercial in Long Beach, just south of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. “It featured all the usual Tony elements: speedboats, helicopter and even a tiger in the swimming pool.”

With his brother Ridley, also a noted director and his partner in a robust pair of production companies, Mr. Scott was the executive producer of “Coma,” a television mini-series set to appear on the A&E network in September.

Tony Scott’s movies were almost always about crime, as in “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” a 2009 thriller (and a remake of the 1974 film by the same title) with Denzel Washington and John Travolta; or conspiracy, as in “Enemy of the State” (1998), with Will Smith and Gene Hackman; or the roar of machinery, as in “Days of Thunder” (1990), with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

Mr. Scott was reported to have spoken recently with Mr. Cruise about developing a sequel to “Top Gun,” a supercharged drama about fighter-jet pilots that became a worldwide hit for both Mr. Scott and Mr. Cruise in 1986. The film took in about $350 million at the box office worldwide, and earned Mr. Scott a reputation for delivering dramas with fast pacing, thrilling effects and stunt work.

Simon Halls, a publicist for both Tony and Ridley Scott, said he did not know what issues might have contributed to Mr. Scott’s death, and he offered no immediate comment from Ridley Scott, who he said was en route from London.

Mr. Scott lived with a cinematic flair to match his films. He was a rock climber who rode motorcycles and drove fast cars. The bridge from which he jumped was a setting in several action films directed by others, including William Friedkin’s “To Live and Die in L.A.,” in which it was the scene of a much-remembered bungee jump.

Mr. Scott was married to Donna Scott, an actress who appeared in several of his films, including “Domino” and “The Last Boy Scout.” She and their twin sons survive him, along with his brother. Information about other family members was not immediately available. He lived in a hilltop home overlooking an expanse of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles.

Anthony David Scott was born on June 21, 1944, in Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, in England. He studied fine arts and received a painting degree from the Sunderland Art School but eventually followed Ridley, his older brother by more than six years, into a career directing and producing in film and television.

Mr. Scott developed an interest in cinematography while in postgraduate studies at Leeds College. His first film, “One of the Missing,” a short based on an Ambrose Bierce story, was financed by the British Film Institute.

From early on Mr. Scott’s career leaned more toward commerce than art. In 1967 he teamed with Ridley to form a London-based commercial production company, known as RSA. It eventually opened offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, London and New York.

In 1995, Mr. Scott also joined his brother in founding Scott Free, a movie and television production company that made films by the dozen, often with stars like Russell Crowe, Mr. Washington and Mr. Cruise when they were at the top of their game.

Mr. Scott’s feature directorial debut came in 1983 with “The Hunger,” a gothic film about lesbians and vampires with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve. In a 2005 interview with Back Stage, he called that movie “an utter disaster.”

 As his directing style evolved, his signatures included the use of hand-held cameras, lots of jump cuts and, sometimes, subtitles, even though actors were speaking English. “I got that from James Brown,” he told Back Stage. “I was shooting a short film with him, and no one could understand a word he said.”

In 1986 The Daily Bruin, the campus newspaper at the University of California, Los Angeles, asked Mr. Scott how he had ended up directing “Top Gun,” with its complex aerobatics. He replied, “I have a kind of macho reputation because I climb mountains, etc.” Mr. Scott climbed in both the Alps and Yosemite.

Mr. Scott’s movies took in about $2 billion at the global box office. But he remained in the shadow of his older brother, whose films have had about equal commercial success — global sales total about $2.6 billion — but have garnered a stronger critical reaction. Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” won a best-picture Oscar.

Still, Mr. Scott seemed to shrug off Ridley’s higher profile. “Nobody gives you money because you’re the brother of so-and-so,” he told The Daily Bruin.

 Mr. Scott was photographed over the years in what appeared to be the same worn, salmon-colored baseball cap. Despite occasional hazards — as when a motorcycle accident in 2005 led to hip-replacement surgery — Mr. Scott insisted on keeping the action, and machinery, in his films as real as possible.

In “Unstoppable,” the latest of his films with Mr. Washington (released in 2010), that meant filming on a 10-mile stretch of railroad track as nine locomotives barreled along it at up to 70 miles per hour. Mr. Scott shot the scenes from onboard the locomotives or from a helicopter.

“I think he was a very courageous person,” Ms. Greene said.

Ana Facio-Krajcer contributed reporting from Los Angeles. Michael Schwirtz and Dave Itzkoff contributed from New York.