Earlier today, around 12:30 PM, Tony Scott, younger brother of famed film director Ridley Scott, and accomplished director himself,  apparently jumped to his death off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles. A suicide note was found in his car which was parked nearby on the bridge, and police discovered and turned over his body to the coroner’s office around 4:30 PM.

The English director’s body of work includes classics and favorites such as The Hunger, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop 2, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Spy Game, and more recently, The Taking of Pelham 123 and Unstoppable. He and Ridley also co produced the tv show Numb3rs and the movie reboot of The A-Team.

Tony was originally born in England, and started in his first self shot movie, directed by Ridley, when the two were 16 and 23, respectively. Tony continued to follow in his brother’s footsteps through college before setting off as a highly successful director of thousands of commercials. He got the notice of Hollywood in the 80’s, and was interested in directing a version of Interview With The Vampire when MGM asked him to direct The Hunger which featured David Bowie and introduced Willem Dafoe in one of his earliest roles. From there, he was fortunate enough to be offered to direct on Top Gun which became a huge success and led to his role in directing many action films over the next few decades and led to his working with some of the biggest names in the business, from Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, and many many others.

Tony was working on a sequel to Top Gun with Tom Cruise at the time of his death.  He was 68.