He was born in Catania, Sicily,[1] and later emigrated to Aarau, Switzerland as a child with his parents.[2] There, he attended Swiss-German schools until high school. After graduation, he decided to move to the United States to pursue his college education. He spent two years at the University at Albany, The State University of New York, after which he was accepted as an undergraduate at UCLA. The Swiss government's scholarship helped him through five years of UCLA and in 1985 he earned his Master of Fine Arts from the UCLA Film School.[3]
After his MFA, a couple of short films, a screenplay, two video documentaries, and a 16 mm thesis film, he returned to Europe to pursue his desire to become a film director. Shortly afterward, he returned to the United States on a work visa to pursue his career in Hollywood as a film editor. He began as an editor on Andrei Konchalovsky's Shy People. Later, he received an assistant editor position working with Oliver Stone. However, it was not easy to get the job. Scalia admired Oliver Stone's work, especially Salvador, so he decided he wanted to work with that director. He got a contact through the sister of one of the assistant editors. Scalia worked on such films as Wall Street (1987) and Talk Radio (1988). He later continued as an associate editor on Born on the Fourth of July and as an additional editor on The Doors.
After five years of working with Oliver Stone, Scalia was finally asked to fully edit a film. It was JFK, for which Scalia and his co-editor, Joe Hutshing, were honored with an Academy Award for Film Editing. Craig McKay was nominated the same year for editing The Silence of the Lambs. Scalia edited a sequel to the movie, Hannibal ten years later. He also received a BAFTA Award and A.C.E. Award for his work.[4]
In the recent years, Scalia edited such movies as Levity (2003) directed by Ed Solomon, a documentary entitled Ashes and Snow, The Great Raid directed by John Dahl, and Memoirs of a Geisha, one of the most publicized movies of 2005, directed by Rob Marshall. Scalia also worked on Hannibal Rising, a movie that tells a story of a teenaged Hannibal and his young sister Mischa Lecter after their parents are killed in World War II. It was directed by Peter Webber and released in 2007. He has a long lasting relationship with Ridley Scott working on movies such as American Gangster in 2007, Body of Lies in 2008 and Robin Hood in 2010. Most recently he worked with director Ridley Scott on The Martian, released in October 2015. In May 2017, Scalia replaced editor Chris Dickens on the film Solo: A Star Wars Story, which was released in May 2018.[8]
