'Top Gun' director Tony Scott commits suicide

Director Tony Scott has committed suicide, according to police.

The 68-year-old British-born Top Gun director was found dead after jumping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles over the weekend, police authorities have revealed.

Lieutenant Joe Bale from the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office told the BBC: "We will go where the facts take us. We have no reason to believe it was not a suicide."

Scott was seen parking his car on the cable-suspension bridge which connects the port district of San Pedro to Terminal Island before jumping into the water at 12:30 local time.

His body was recovered from the harbour less than three hours later and identified by brother and Prometheus director Ridley Scott

A note was found in Scott’s car that Bale said he believed would turn out to be a suicide note, though he was not familiar with its contents. “Typically, when they find a note in cases like this, it’s not a shopping list,” he said.

The bridge, the surface of which clears the harbour’s navigation channel by a height of about 56 metres, connects the port district of San Pedro at the southern tip of Los Angeles to Terminal Island in the harbour.

Katherine Rowe, the filmmaker's spokesperson, issued a statement saying: "I can confirm that Tony Scott has indeed passed away. The family asks that their privacy be respected at this time."

Scott, born in North Shields, Northumberland, in England, and frequently seen behind the camera in his signature faded red baseball cap, is credited with directing more than two dozen movies and television shows and producing nearly 50 titles.

He was best known for muscular but stylish high-octane thrillers that showcased some of Hollywood’s biggest stars in a body of work that dated back to the 1980s and established him as one of the most successful action directors in the business.

He got his start making TV commercials for his older sibling’s London-based production company, Ridley Scott Associates, and segued into movies for television and film.

His feature directorial debut — 1983 vampire movie The Hunger starring British rocker David Bowie and French actress Catherine Deneuve — was a flop. But he bounced back three years later with the fighter jet adventure Top Gun, which starred Tom Cruise as a hot-shot pilot and followed that with another big hit, the 1987 Eddie Murphy comedy Beverly Hills Cop II.

Other notable directing credits include the 1990 racing drama Days of Thunder, which also featured Cruise, the 1995 submarine thriller Crimson Tide, co-starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, and the 1998 spy thriller Enemy of the State, which paired Hackman and Will Smith.

The 2001 espionage drama Spy Game teamed Robert Redford with Brad Pitt.

Denzel Washington became Scott’s most frequent star, appearing in four other films by the director — the 2004 vengeance drama Man on Fire, 2006 sci-fi adventure Deja Vu, a 2009 remake of “The Taking of the Pelham 1 2 3,” a subway hostage thriller co-starring John Travolta, and the 2010 runaway-train blockbuster, “Unstoppable.”

Scott and his older brother were executive producers together on two successful prime-time television dramas, Numb3rs, which ran on CBS from 2005 to 2010, and The Good Wife, which premiered in 2009 and is still running in CBS.

According to the Hollywood website Internet Movie Database, Tony Scott had been in production as the director of a film called Emma’s War, about a British aid worker in Sudan who marries a warlord seeking to control part of the country.

Scott is survived by his third wife, Donna, with whom he had two children.