Jake Scott

LA-based director Jake Scott, 39, is part of an industry dynasty. He's the son of Ridley Scott, the nephew of Tony Scott and the brother of directors Jordan and Luke Scott.

My family has been touched by cancer many times. I watched my brother-in-law dying in Boston of lymphoma, and I went straight from his deathbed to London to shoot a commercial. My buddies were all dressed up in Lycra and were very excited about getting ready for the first ride to Cannes. So I bought a bike and started training. I had never physically given myself to anything like this and I found it so rewarding. Everyone who's done it has had the same feeling.

There's an enormous sense of achievement when you ride into Cannes and you've ridden a 1,000 miles on a bicycle for charity and you're looking road-worn. There's a kind of hedonism in Cannes, with everyone making sure that the people who vote for awards are having nice dinners. It's a lot of fun but a lot of money is wasted and there's a tendency to forget the outside world.

I don't think I've been a particularly grown-up person in my life and I think it was holding me back. In my late twenties and early thirties my behaviour was very egotistical, and I had a self image as a director that was not entirely accurate: I thought I was better than I was.

The script for Plunkett & Macleane [the film Scott made in 1999] was a mess and we had no business getting into shooting it. I don't know what we were all thinking. The original script was very different. It was a kind of insolent romp in the spirit of Butch Cassidy with a touch of Withnail and I thrown in. It went into a development vortex. We put it through the de-interesting machine and it came out with a bog-standard narrative. It was pretty much a disaster.

Cycling gives me a focus outside of myself, because every turn of the pedal wheel is painful and I go outside myself. It's sort of strange, extreme sportsmanship thing. I would never have believed it, but I would encourage everyone to do it.

My dad has this north of England work ethic and when my brother Luke and I were growing up he was very insistent that our school holidays were not spent whiling away the hours watching videos and sneaking cans of beer. He said: "Go work on a shoot." We were runners in Soho and ended up working on commercials and films. Winter, summer and spring we would be working. I was running up and down Soho at the age of 12. I can remember getting lost on my way to Covent Garden and panicking a bit, but the experience was brilliant.

I was always very good at drawing and to make money I'd do storyboards for directors and agencies around Soho. I learnt a lot because directors are using you as a conduit to the story board, so without realising it you're having a very privileged insight into how directors' minds work.

I pretty much knew that I wanted to be a painter, but I left art school early and then went off on a funny tangent. I thought I could be a fashion designer. I went to see a show by Issey Miyake called Bodyworks and something happened to me. I thought it was amazing - a fusion of theatre design and fashion and art direction, and I thought I could find a niche. I went off to do fashion design at Hornsey School of Art, but I found myself sitting at interlocking machines day in day out, cutting on the bias, and I thought to myself, I'm just not interested.

In America, advertising is seen as much more of a business, whereas in London there's an emphasis on awards - there are hundreds of them. Everyone is looking at everyone else and if you set one foot wrong, if you do a slightly dodgy commercial… there are such high stakes. Whereas here in the US you're making money and there's less emphasis on awards.

One thing I will never get used to in the States is sitting in a room and editing with four other people. It's very tough for an editor to work that way - to get a clear point of view - and I think it does affect the work. But the best creatives in the US are as good as the best creatives anywhere.

I'd like to come back to England. I've been here 14 years longer than I planned. The climate here politically is extremely spooky. This administration is terrifying, and I don't see this country getting more liberal.

I wouldn't want my children to grow up in LA. A lot of time here is spent in a car - hours on freeways - and it's very segregated. I'm not naïve. I know that London is segregated in a way, but I grew up there and I miss it enormously. I would like to give my kids some of the things I knew as a kid: playing football in the park, the art galleries and museums, and also that slightly biting, cynical English sense of humour.

With music videos, even if I am not a fan of the artist, I have to feel something about the song. Funnily enough, I have worked more with artists I am not particularly keen on. For example, I was never a big fan of George Michael, but I made Flawless last year and I was very pleased with it. It was driven by the track. There's something great about the song.

I've got the script done for a new film and we're just trying to find a cast. It's called Kimberly Akimbo and it's based on a play about a 16-year-old with the aging disease progeria. They don't usually live past about 17, so this is about a girl whose desire to live is greater
than all the people around her who are fine. It's life-affirming, even though she's ill, and it's a fantastic bit of writing.

I'm not a snob about the things I do. Just before Christmas I did an advertisement for dog food - for Pedigree. Rick Lawley, an editor from London who owns the White House, now lives in LA. I got him to edit it. I kept his message: "Jake, dog food? We're doing dog food?" But I love dogs and I always wanted to do a dog food ad. We had 10 days of shooting which was a very free-spirited celebration of dogs. It was great fun.

I love that feeling you get when you know that you could have done a little better,
that there is room for improvement.

Nike's 'Just do it' is one of the greatest lines in the history of advertising. I think it's a very positive message and I really believe it. Procrastination is something we all do. If you want to try rock climbing, try it. If you want to paint, do painting.

I do wish that sometimes Nike would promote its products by showing less-accomplished athletes. People like you and me, people who are going up against it, trying to
lose weight. That's part of athletics as well and there's great humour in it.

I don't watch TV at all - partly because we don't want the kids watching it. American TV is mostly so horrendous, although when I was last in London I was shocked by the insane culture of celebrity which is now very evident there. I really don't give a fuck about Hello! magazine and what's happening to Posh and Becks… the fascination with that sort of stuff is so empty and soulless.

Money doesn't represent success to me. I think success is happiness. If at the moment of death you can know that you have been happy and have no regrets - or that they're few and far between, or came with a lesson - that's success.

America is so indoctrinated by all this religion at the moment. It's comedy - like Dr Strangelove "precious bodily fluids" time. There's this arse of a president and the government is trying to rewrite the constitution. Everyone thinks they are going to get blown up. The only way to understand it is that people are very afraid because they are too isolated. They should be getting out more - into the ghetto to eat Armenian food; sit with Orthodox people; eat Indian food. You don't have to go to Angola to get the taste of life on the rest of the planet.

If I could change the world I would start with the things closest to me. It's like your mum and dad said: do unto others as you would have done unto you. If we all examined that and practised it, we would be in a better situation.

If I could live my life again I would not look in the mirror so much, because my biggest problem has been my vanity. I think it has held me back. It is a metaphor for caring what people think. I'd have preferred to care less about what other people feel.