film composers I like
List activity
1 view
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
11 people
- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
James Horner began studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a bachelor's degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master's degree at UCLA and teach music theory there. He later completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory at UCLA. Horner began scoring student films for the American Film Institute in the late 1970s, which paved the way for scoring assignments on a number of small-scale films. His first large, high-profile project was composing music for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which would lead to numerous other film offers and opportunities to work with world-class performers such as the London Symphony Orchestra. With over 75 projects to his name, and work with people such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Oliver Stone, and Ron Howard, Horner firmly established himself as a strong voice in the world of film scoring. In addition, Horner composed a classical concert piece in the 1980s, called "Spectral Shimmers", which was world premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Horner passed away in a plane crash on June 22, 2015, two months short of his 62nd birthday.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Michael Kamen was born on 15 April 1948 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Don Juan DeMarco (1994) and X-Men (2000). He was married to Sandra Keenan. He died on 18 November 2003 in London, England, UK.- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
In his ongoing, decades-long career as a composer, Alan Silvestri has blazed an innovative trail with his exciting and melodic scores, winning the applause of Hollywood and movie audiences the world over. With a credit list of over 100 films Silvestri has composed some of the most recognizable and beloved themes in movie history. His efforts have been recognized with two Oscar nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, three Grammy awards, two Emmy awards, and numerous International Film Music Critics Awards, Saturn Awards, and Hollywood Music In Media Awards.
Born in New York City and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, Silvestri first dreamed of becoming a jazz guitar player. After spending two years at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, he hit the road as a performer and arranger. Landing in Hollywood at the age of 22, he found himself successfully composing the music for 1972's "The Doberman Gang" which established his place in the world of film composing.
The 1970s witnessed the rise of energetic synth-pop scores, establishing Silvestri as the action rhythmatist for TV's highway patrol hit "CHiPs." This action driven score caught the ear of a young filmmaker named Robert Zemeckis, whose hit film, 1984's "Romancing the Stone," was the perfect first date for the composer and director. It's success became the basis of a decades long collaboration that continues to this day. Their numerous collaborations have taken them through fascinating landscapes and stylistic variations, from the "Back to the Future" trilogy to the jazzy world of Toontown in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" the tension filled rooms of "What Lies Beneath" and "Death Becomes Her", to the cosmic wonder of "Contact;" the emotional isolation of "Castaway", to the magic of the "Polar Express". But perhaps no film collaboration defines their creative relationship better than Zemeckis' 1994 Best Picture winner, "Forrest Gump", for which Silvestri's gift for melodically beautiful themes earned him an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination and the affection of film music lovers everywhere. This 35 year, 21 film collaboration includes such recent films as "Flight", "Allied" and most recently "Welcome To Marwen". Zemeckis and Silvestri are currently working on "The Witches" based on Roald Dahl's 1973 classic book scheduled for release in October of 2020.
Though the Zemeckis/Silvestri collaboration is legendary, Silvestri has scored films of every imaginable style and genre. His energy has brought excitement and emotion to the hard-hitting orchestral scores for Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One", James Cameron's "The Abyss" as well as "Predator" and "The Mummy Returns." Alan's diversity is on full display in family entertainment films such as "The Father of the Bride 1 and 2", "Parent Trap", "Stuart Little 1 and 2", Disney's "Lilo and Stitch", "The Croods" as well as "Night at the Museum 1, 2 and 3" while his passion for melody fuels the romantic emotion of films like "The Bodyguard" and "What Women Want".
Most recently, Alan has composed the music for Marvel's "Avengers: Endgame." The film is the culmination of a partnership with Marvel that began in 2011 with Alan's dynamically heroic score for "Captain America: The First Avenger" followed by "Avengers". Since 2011 Alan's collaboration with Marvel helped propel "The Avengers" and "Avengers: Infinity War" to spectacular world-wide success.
Silvestri's success has also crossed into the world of songwriting. His partnership with Six-Time Grammy Award winner Glen Ballard has produced hits such as the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated song "Believe" (Josh Groban) for "The Polar Express", "Butterfly Fly Away" (Miley Cyrus) for "Hannah Montana The Movie", "God Bless Us Everyone" (Andrea Bocelli) for "A Christmas Carol" and "A Hero Comes Home" (Idina Menzel) for "Beowulf".
Alan and his wife Sandra are long time residents of California's central coast. In 1998 the Silvestri family embarked on a new venture as the founders of Silvestri Vineyards. Their wines show that lovingly cultivated fruit has a music all its own. "There's something about the elemental side of winemaking that appeals to me," he says. "Both music making and wine making involve a magical blending of art and science. Just as each note brings it own voice to the melody, each vine brings it's own unique personality to the wine."
Their other great passion is the ongoing search for the cure to Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes. With the diagnosis of their son at two years of age (now 29) they continue to work the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and dream of the day this disease (and all of the suffering it brings to so many) will finally become a thing of the past.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and manager Maximilian Steiner. His family was Jewish. As a child, he was astonishingly musically gifted, composing complex works as a teenager and completing the course of study at Vienna's Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in only one year, at the age of sixteen. He studied under Gustav Mahler and, before the age of twenty, made his living as a conductor and as composer of works for the theater, the concert hall, and vaudeville. After a brief sojourn in Britian, Steiner moved to the USA in the same wave as fellow film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and quickly became a sought-after orchestrator and conductor on Broadway, bringing the Western classical tradition in which he had been raised to mainstream audiences.
He was soon snatched up by the film studios with the advent of sound and helped the fledgling talkies become musically sophisticated within a brief few years. He was one of the first to fully integrate the musical score with the images on-screen and to score individual scenes for their content and create leitmotifs for individual characters, as opposed to simply providing vaguely appropriate mood music, as evidenced in King Kong (1933), which set the standard for American film music for years to come.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, he was one of the most respected, innovative, and brilliant composers of American film music, creating a truly staggering number of exceptional scores for films of all types. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his scores eighteen times and won three times. Years after his death in 1971, he remains one of the giants of motion picture history, and his music still thrives.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
The man behind the low woodwinds that open Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking violins of Psycho (1960), and the plaintive saxophone of Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. After writing scores for Orson Welles's radio shows in the 1930s (including the notorious 1938 "The War of the Worlds" broadcast), he was the obvious choice to score Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane (1941), and, subsequently, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although he removed his name from the latter after additional music was added without his (or Welles's) consent when the film was mutilated by a panic-stricken studio. Herrmann was a prolific film composer, producing some of his most memorable work for Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote nine scores. A notorious perfectionist and demanding (he once said that most directors didn't have a clue about music, and he blithely ignored their instructions--like Hitchcock's suggestion that Psycho (1960) have a jazz score and no music in the shower scene). He ended his partnership with Hitchcock after the latter rejected his score for Torn Curtain (1966) on studio advice. He was also an early experimenter in the sounds used in film scores, most famously The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), scored for two theremins, pianos, and a horn section; and was a consultant on the electronic sounds created by Oskar Sala on the mixtrautonium for The Birds (1963). His last score was for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and died just hours after recording it. He also wrote an opera, "Wuthering Heights", and a cantata, "Moby Dick".- Music Department
- Composer
- Additional Crew
Born on February 10, 1929, Jerry Goldsmith studied piano with Jakob Gimpel and composition, theory, and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also attended classes in film composition given by Miklós Rózsa at the Univeristy of Southern California. In 1950, he was employed as a clerk typist in the music department at CBS. There, he was given his first embryonic assignments as a composer for radio shows such as "Romance" and "CBS Radio Workshop". He wrote one score a week for these shows, which were performed live on transmission. He stayed with CBS until 1960, having already scored The Twilight Zone (1959). He was hired by Revue Studios to score their series Thriller (1960). It was here that he met the influential film composer Alfred Newman who hired Goldsmith to score the film Lonely Are the Brave (1962), his first major feature film score. An experimentalist, Goldsmith constantly pushed forward the bounds of film music: Planet of the Apes (1968) included horns blown without mouthpieces and a bass clarinetist fingering the notes but not blowing. He was unafraid to use the wide variety of electronic sounds and instruments which had become available, although he did not use them for their own sake.
He rose rapidly to the top of his profession in the early to mid-1960s, with scores such as Freud (1962), A Patch of Blue (1965) and The Sand Pebbles (1966). In fact, he received Oscar nominations for all three and another in the 1960s for Planet of the Apes (1968). From then onwards, his career and reputation was secure and he scored an astonishing variety of films during the next 30 years or so, from Patton (1970) to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and from Chinatown (1974) to The Boys from Brazil (1978). He received 17 Oscar nominations but won only once, for The Omen (1976) in 1977 (Goldsmith himself dismissed the thought of even getting a nomination for work on a "horror show"). He enjoyed giving concerts of his music and performed all over the world, notably in London, where he built up a strong relationship with London Symphony Orchestra.
Jerry Goldsmith died at age 75 on July 21, 2004 after a long battle with cancer.- Music Department
- Composer
- Additional Crew
Elmer Bernstein was educated at the Walden School and New York University. He served in the US Army Air Corps in World War II, writing scores for the service radio unit. He also wrote and arranged musical numbers for Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band. A prolific and respected film music composer, he was a protégé of Aaron Copland, who studied music with Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe. Bernstein worked in various artistic endeavors, including painting and the theatre and also performed as an actor and dancer. Among his early composition work were scores for United Nations radio programs and television and industrial documentaries. His original scores for films range over an enormous variety of styles, with his groundbreaking jazz score for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), light musical comedies such as his Oscar-winning Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) score, and perhaps his most familiar score, for the western The Magnificent Seven (1960). Between 1963 and 1969, Bernstein served as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
A few years before before his death, he acquired something of a cult status among fans of English football when his familiar main theme for The Great Escape (1963) was adopted by them and hummed and played, lustily, during matches.- Music Department
- Composer
- Producer
Dimitri Tiomkin was a Russian Jewish composer who emigrated to America and became one of the most distinguished and best-loved music writers of Hollywood. He won a hallowed place in the pantheon of the most successful and productive composers in American film history, earning himself four Oscars and sixteen Academy Awards nominations. He was born Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin on May 10, 1894, in Kremenchug, Russia. His mother, Marie (nee Tartakovsky), was a Russian pianist and teacher. His father, Zinovi Tiomkin, was a renowned medical doctor. His uncle, rabbi Vladimir Tiomkin, was the first President of the World Zionist Union. Young Dimitri began his music studies under the tutelage of his mother. Then, at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he studied piano under Felix Blumenfeld and Isabelle Vengerova. He also studied composition under the conservatory's director, Aleksandr Glazunov, who appreciated Tiomkin's talent and hired him as a piano tutor for his niece. Soon Dimitri appeared on Russian stages as a child pianist prodigy and continued to develop into a virtuoso pianist. Like other intellectuals in St. Petersburg, Tiomkin frequented the club near the Opera, called Stray Dog Café, where Russian celebrities, including directors Vsevolod Meyerhold and Nicolas Evreinoff, writers Boris Pasternak, Aleksei Tolstoy, Sergei Esenin, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev and Vladimir Mayakovsky, had their bohemian hangout. There Tiomlkin could be seen with his two friends, composer Sergei Prokofiev and choreographer Mikhail Fokin. At that time he also gained exposure and a keen interest in American music, including the works of Irving Berlin, ragtime, blues, and early jazz. Tiomkin started his music career as a piano accompanist for Russian and French silent films in movie houses of St. Petersburg. When the famous comedian Max Linder toured in Russia, he hired Tiomkin to play piano improvisations for the Max Linder Show, and their collaboration was successful. He also provided classical piano accompaniment for the famous ballerina Tamara Karsavina. However, the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia caused dramatic political and economic changes. From 1917 to 1921 Tiomkin was a Red Army staff composer, writing scores for revolutionary mass spectacles at the Palace Square involving 500 musicians and 8000 extras, such as "The Storming of the Winter Palace" staged by Vsevolod Meyerhold and Nikolai Yevreinov for the third anniversary of the Communist Revolution. In 1921 Tiomkin emigrated from Russia and moved to Berlin to join his father, who was working with the famous German biochemist Paul Ehrlich. In Berlin Tiomkin had several study sessions with Ferruccio Busoni and his circle. By 1922 Dimitri was well known for his concert appearances in Germany, often with the Berlin Philharmonic. Among his repertoire were pieces written for him by other composers. He also concertized in France. There, in Paris, Feodor Chaliapin Sr. convinced Tiomkin to emigrate to the United States. In 1925 Tiomkin got his first gig in New York: he became the main pianist for a Broadway dance studio. There he met and soon married the principal dancer/choreographer, Albertina Rasch. He also met composers George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern. In 1928 Tiomkin made a concert tour of Europe, introducing the works of Gershwin to audiences there. He gave the French premiere of Gershwin's "Piano Concerto in F" at the famed "L'Opera de Paris." His Hollywood debut came in 1929, when MGM offered him a contract to score music for five films. His wife got a position as an assistant choreographer for some musical films. He also scored a Universal Pictures film, performed concerts in New York City and continued composing ballet music for his wife's dance work. He also continued writing American popular music and songs. He received further Broadway exposure with the Shuberts and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.. He produced his own play "Keeping Expenses Down," but it was a flop amidst the gloom of the Big Depression, and he once again returned to Hollywood in 1933. When he came back he was on his own. By that time Tiomkin was disillusioned with the intrigue and politics inside the Hollywood studio system. He already knew the true value of his musical talent, and chose to freelance with the studios rather than accepting a multi-picture contract. He became something of a crusader, pushing for better pay and residuals. His independent personality was reflected in his music and business life: he was never under a long-term studio contract. Though MGM was the first to be acquainted with his services, Tiomkin next turned to Paramount for Alice in Wonderland (1933), another fine example of making music that he liked. Hollywood's most prominent independent composer, Tiomkin, thanks to his free-agent status, negotiated contractual terms to his benefit, which in turn benefited other musicians. He aggressively sought music publishing rights and formed his own ASCAP music publishing company, Volta Music Corporation, while remaining faithful to France-based performing rights organization SACEM. In Tiomkin's own words: "My fight is for dignity. Not only for composer, but for all artists responsible for picture." He also fought for employing qualified musicians regardless of their race. As a composer classically trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tiomkin was highly skilled in orchestral arrangements with complex brass and strings, but he was also thoroughly versed in the musical subtleties of America and integrated it into traditional European forms. His interest in the musical form resulted in his next score, for the operetta Naughty Marietta (1935), a popular musical that teamed Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. He also did his fair share of stock music arranging. Among his most successful partnerships was that with director Frank Capra, starting with Lost Horizon (1937), where Tiomkin used many innovative ideas, and received his first Academy Award nomination. The association with Capra lasted through four more famous films, culminating with It's a Wonderful Life (1946). In 1937 Tiomkin became a naturalized American citizen. The next year he made his public conducting debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. During the WWII years he wrote music for 12 military documentaries, earning himself a special decoration from the US Department of Defense. After the war he ventured into all styles of music for movies, ranging from mystery and horror to adventure and drama, such as his enchanting score, intricately worked around Claude Debussy's "Girl with the Flaxen Hair," for the haunting Portrait of Jennie (1948) and the energetic martial themes for Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). He scored three films for Alfred Hitchcock, perhaps the most inventive being for the tension-building Strangers on a Train (1951) with its out-of-control carousel finale. He also worked with top directors in that exclusively American genre: the western. His loudest success was the original music for Duel in the Sun (1946) by King Vidor. For that film, Tiomkin wrote a lush orchestral score, trying to fulfill writer/producer David O. Selznick's request to "Make a theme for orgasm!" Tiomkin worked for several weeks, and composed a powerful theme culminating with 40 drummers. Selsnick was impressed, but commented: "This is not orgasm!" Tiomkin worked for one more month and delivered an even more powerful theme culminating with 100 voices. Selznick was impressed again, but commented: "This is not orgasm! This is not the way I f..k!" Tiomkin replied brilliantly, "Mister Selznick, you may f..k the way you want, but this is the way I f..k!" Selznick was convinced, and after that Tiomkin's music was fully accepted. In 1948 he wrote the score for one of the westerns with John Wayne, Red River (1948) by Howard Hawks. Wayne had Tiomkin's touch on five more movies into the 1960s. Tiomkin was adding a song to all of his scores, starting with the obscure Trail to Mexico (1946). The result was successful, and the western score with songs became Tiomkin's signature. Horns and lush string orchestral sound are most associated with Tiomkin's style, which culminated in The Unforgiven (1960) by John Huston, although he used the same approach in High Noon (1952) with the famous song "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'" and Howard Hawks' The Big Sky (1952). Most of his big-screen songs were written for westerns and totaled some 25 themes. The most songs he composed for one movie was six for Friendly Persuasion (1956). Tiomkin achieved dramatic effects by using his signature orchestral arrangements in such famous films as Giant (1956), The Old Man and the Sea (1958) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). He also wrote music and theme songs for several TV series, most notably for Clint Eastwood's Rawhide (1959). In 1967 his beloved wife, Albertina Rasch, passed away, and Tiomkin was emotionally devastated. Going back from his wife's funeral to his Hancock Park home in Los Angeles, he was attacked and beaten by a street gang. The crime caused him more pain, so upon recommendation of his doctor, Tiomkin moved to Europe for the rest of his life. In the 1960s Tiomkin produced Mackenna's Gold (1969) starring Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif. He also executive-produced and orchestrated the US/Russian co-production Tchaikovsky (1970), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for best music, and the movie was also nominated in the foreign language film category. Filming on locations in Russia allowed him to return to his homeland for the first time since 1921, which also was the last visit to his mother country. In 1972 Tiomkin married Olivia Cynthia Patch, a British aristocrat, and the couple settled in London. They also maintained a second home in Paris. For the rest of his life Tiomkin indulged himself in playing piano, a joy also shared by his wife. He died on November 11, 1979, in London, England, and was laid to rest in Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Glendale, California. In 1999 Dimitri Tiomkin was pictured on one of six 33¢ USA commemorative postage stamps in the Legends of American Music series, honoring Hollywood Composers. His music remains popular, and is continuously used in many new films, such as Inglourious Basterds (2009) by director Quentin Tarantino.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to be aired on MTV (August 1, 1981).
Hans Florian Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, then in West Germany, the son of Brigitte (Weil) and Hans Joachim Zimmer. He entered the world of film music in London during a long collaboration with famed composer and mentor Stanley Myers, which included the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). He soon began work on several successful solo projects, including the critically acclaimed A World Apart, and during these years Zimmer pioneered the use of combining old and new musical technologies. Today, this work has earned him the reputation of being the father of integrating the electronic musical world with traditional orchestral arrangements.
A turning point in Zimmer's career came in 1988 when he was asked to score Rain Man for director Barry Levinson. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year and earned Zimmer his first Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score. The next year, Zimmer composed the score for another Best Picture Oscar recipient, Driving Miss Daisy (1989), starring Jessica Tandy, and Morgan Freeman.
Having already scored two Best Picture winners, in the early 1990s, Zimmer cemented his position as a preeminent talent with the award-winning score for The Lion King (1994). The soundtrack has sold over 15 million copies to date and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, an American Music Award, a Tony, and two Grammy Awards. In total, Zimmer's work has been nominated for 7 Golden Globes, 7 Grammys and seven Oscars for Rain Man (1988), Gladiator (2000), The Lion King (1994), As Good as It Gets (1997), The The Preacher's Wife (1996), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Prince of Egypt (1998), and The Last Samurai (2003).
With his career in full swing, Zimmer was anxious to replicate the mentoring experience he had benefited from under Stanley Myers' guidance. With state-of-the-art technology and a supportive creative environment, Zimmer was able to offer film-scoring opportunities to young composers at his Santa Monica-based musical "think tank." This approach helped launch the careers of such notable composers as Mark Mancina, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Nick Glennie-Smith, and Klaus Badelt.
In 2000, Zimmer scored the music for Gladiator (2000), for which he received an Oscar nomination, in addition to Golden Globe and Broadcast Film Critics Awards for his epic score. It sold more than three million copies worldwide and spawned a second album Gladiator: More Music From The Motion Picture, released on the Universal Classics/Decca label. Zimmer's other scores that year included Mission: Impossible II (2000), The Road to El Dorado (2000), and An Everlasting Piece (2000), directed by Barry Levinson.
Some of his other impressive scores include Pearl Harbor (2001), The Ring (2002), four films directed by Ridley Scott; Matchstick Men (2003), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and Thelma & Louise (1991), Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and A League of Their Own (1992), Tony Scott's True Romance (1993), Tears of the Sun (2003), Ron Howard's Backdraft (1991), Days of Thunder (1990), Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997), and the animated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) for which he also co-wrote four of the songs with Bryan Adams, including the Golden Globe nominated Here I Am.
At the 27th annual Flanders International Film Festival, Zimmer performed live for the first time in concert with a 100-piece orchestra and a 100-voice choir. Choosing selections from his impressive body of work, Zimmer performed newly orchestrated concert versions of Gladiator, Mission: Impossible II (2000), Rain Man (1988), The Lion King (1994), and The Thin Red Line (1998). The concert was recorded by Decca and released as a concert album entitled "The Wings Of A Film: The Music Of Hans Zimmer."
In 2003, Zimmer completed his 100th film score for the film The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, for which he received both a Golden Globe and a Broadcast Film Critics nomination. Zimmer then scored Nancy Meyers' comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003), the animated Dreamworks film, Shark Tale (2004) (featuring voices of Will Smith, Renée Zellweger, Robert De Niro, Jack Black, and Martin Scorsese), and Jim Brooks' Spanglish (2004) starring Adam Sandler and Téa Leoni (for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination). His 2005 projects include Paramount's The Weather Man (2005) starring Nicolas Cage, Dreamworks' Madagascar (2005), and the Warner Bros. summer release, Batman Begins (2005).
Zimmer's additional honors and awards include the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in Film Composition from the National Board of Review, and the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He has also received ASCAP's Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Hans and his wife live in Los Angeles and he is the father of four children.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Basil Poledouris was born on August 21, 1945 in Kansas City. He started taking piano lessons when he was 7 years old. Eventually, he went on to become a student at USC, where he studied the arts of directing, cinematography, editing, sound and, of course, music. It was also at USC he met John Milius and Randal Kleiser, both acclaimed directors with whom he would work in the future. Even though Basil had already composed music to John Milius' much talked about Big Wednesday (1978), his real breakthrough came in 1982 when he composed the score to Milius' epic fantasy movie, Conan the Barbarian (1982). The powerful themes that Basil created for this movie opened the eyes of the movie industry, as well as the public, and it is arguably one of the best soundtracks of the 80s. Basil went on to make soundtracks for such movies as: RoboCop (1987) (the second Paul Verhoeven movie of many for which he has composed, the first being 1985's Flesh+Blood (1985)), Lonesome Dove (1989) (for which he won an Emmy), Farewell to the King (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Free Willy (1993), in Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (1997) with Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards and Les Misérables (1998).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
As Danny Elfman was growing up in the Los Angeles area, he was largely unaware of his talent for composing. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Danny and his older brother Richard Elfman started a musical troupe while in Paris; the group "Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo" was created for Richard's directorial debut, Forbidden Zone (1980) (now considered a cult classic by Elfman fans). The group's name went through many incarnations over the years, beginning with "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" and eventually just Oingo Boingo. While continuing to compose eclectic, intelligent rock music for his L.A.-based band (some of which had been used in various film soundtracks, e.g. Weird Science (1985)), Danny formed a friendship with young director Tim Burton, who was then a fan of Oingo Boingo. Danny went on to score the soundtrack of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Danny's first orchestral film score. The Elfman-Burton partnership continued (most notably through the hugely-successful "Batman" flicks) and opened doors of opportunity for Danny, who has been referred to as "Hollywood's hottest film composer".