ZIMMER, Hans

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Composer. Nationality: German. Born: Hans Florian Zimmer in Frankfurt, Germany, 12 September 1957; moved to London, 1971. Education: Attended high school in London; no formal music education. Family: Married to Suzanne Zimmer; two children. Career: Composed advertising jingles, 1973–75; wrote songs for rock bands The Buggles, Tangerine Dream, and Ultravox; rock musician and composer, 1970s and 1980s; first film soundtrack, 1982; worked as assistant to and established Lillie Yard Studio with Stanley Myers, 1982; first solo film score, 1988; scored several television series, including Millenium, 1992, Space Rangers, 1993, The Critic, 1994, and High Incident, 1996; established Media Ventures, 1992; head of the music department at DreamWorks SKG, 1997. Awards: Academy Award for Best Music, Original Score, Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement with Accompanying Vocals, and Golden Globe for Best Original Score-Motion Picture, for The Lion King, 1994; Tony Award for Best Original Score for Broadway, for The Lion King, 1995; Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television, for Crimson Tide, 1996; BMI Award for lifetime achievement, 1996; Glaubber Award for Best Original Score-Comedy or Musical (Brazil), for As Good As It Gets, 1998; Golden Satellite Award for Best Motion Picture Score, for The Thin Red Line, 1999. Agent: Gorfaine-Schwartz Agency, 3301 Barham Blvd., Suite 301, Los Angeles, CA 90068, U.S.A.

Films as Composer:

1982

Moonlighting (Skolimowski) (with Stanley Myers)

1984

Histoire d'O: Chapitre 2 (Story of O, Part II) (Rochat) (with Myers); Success Is the Best Revenge (Skolimowski) (with Myers)

1985

Insignificance (Roeg) (with Myers); Wild Horses (Lowry—for TV) (with Myers)

1986

Separate Vacations (Anderson) (with Myers)

1987

Comeback (Ambrose—for TV); Terminal Exposure (Mastorakis); The Wind (Mastorakis)

1988

A World Apart (Menges); Twister (Almereyda); Burning Secret (Birkin); The Fruit Machine (Wonderland) (Saville); Nature of the Beast (with Myers); Paperhouse (Rose); Rain Man (Levinson) (+ musical score); Spies Inc. (Thomas); Taffin (Megahy)

1989

Black Rain (Scott); Dark Obsession (Diamond Skulls) (Broomfield); Driving Miss Daisy (Beresford); Prisoners of Rio (Wiezien Rio) (Majewski); First Born (miniseries—for TV)

1990

Bird on a Wire (Badham); Chicago Joe and the Showgirl (Rose); Days of Thunder (Scott); Fools of Fortune (O'Connor); Green Card (Weir); Pacific Heights (Schlesinger); To the Moon, Alice (Nelson—for TV) (as Hans Florian Zimmer); Nightmare at Noon (Mastorakis)

1991

Regarding Henry (Nichols); Backdraft (Howard); K2 (European version) (Roddam); Thelma & Louise (Scott)

1992

A League of Their Own (Marshall); Power of One (Avildsen); Radio Flyer (Donner); Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (Finch); Toys (Levinson)

1993

Calendar Girl (Whitesell); Point of No Return (Badham); Cool Runnings (Turteltaub); True Romance (Scott); The House of the Spirits (August); Younger and Younger (Adlon)

1994

Renaissance Man (Marshall); I'll Do Anything (Brooks); Drop Zone (Badham); The Lion King (Allers and Minkoff); Africa: The Serengeti (Casey)

1995

Beyond Rangoon (Boorman); Crimson Tide (Scott); Nine Months (Columbus); Something to Talk About (Hallstrom); Two Deaths (Roeg); The Preacher's Wife (Marshall)

1996

The Whole Wide World (Ireland); The Fan (Scott); Broken Arrow (Woo); The Rock (Bay) (+ score arranger); Muppet Treasure Island (Henson)

1997

The Peacemaker (Leder); Scream 2 (Craven); Fräulein Smillas Gespür für Schnee (Smilla's Sense of Snow) (August); As Good As It Gets (Brooks) (+ music arranger and song producer [uncredited])

1998

The Last Days (Moll); The Prince of Egypt (Chapman, Hickman, others) (+ lyricist); The Thin Red Line (Malick)

1999

El Candidato (for TV); Chill Factor (Johnson)

2000

The Road to El Dorado (Bergeron, Finn, others); Gladiator (Scott); Mission Impossible 2 (Woo)

2001

Hannibal; Pearl Harbor

Other Films:

1982

Eureka (Roeg) (additional composer)

1985

My Beautiful Laundrette (Frears) (music producer)

1987

The Last Emperor (Bertolucci) (score producer)

1991

White Fang (Kleiser) (additional music)

1993

Sniper (Llosa) (additional music)

1994

Monkey Trouble (Amurri) (additional music)

1996

White Squall (Scott) (music producer)

1997

The Borrowers (Hewitt) (score producer); Fame L.A. (Green, Miller, others—for TV) (score producer); Face/Off (Woo) (score producer)

1998

Endurance (Greenspan and Woodhead) (music producer); With Friends Like These. . . (music producer); Antz (Darnell, Gutterman, others) (executive music producer)

Publications

On ZIMMER: books—

Karlin, Fred, Listening to Movies: The Film Lover's Guide to Film Music, New York, 1994.

Marill, Alvin H., Keeping Score: Film and Television Music, 1988–1997, Landham, Maryland, 1998.

On ZIMMER: articles—

Marans, Michael, "Hans Zimmer," in Keyboard. vol. 15, no. 6, June 1989.

Widders-Ellis, "A World View: Under the Gun with Days of Thunder," in Keyboard, vol. 16, June 1990.

Kimble, Christopher, "Cameos: Composer Hans Zimmer," in Premiere, vol. 4, no. 9, May 1991.

Reece, D. Menken, "Zimmer Honored at BMI Film, TV Awards," in Billboard, 8 June 1996.

Burlingame, Jon, "They Shoot, He Scores," in Los Angeles Times, 15 December 1998.

Essay in Craggs, Stewart A., Soundtracks: An International Dictionary of Composers for Film, Aldershot, England, and Brookfield, Vermont, 1998.

Black, Edwin, "Interview with Hans Zimmer," in Film Score Monthly: The Online Magazine of motion Picture and Television Music Appreciation, http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/features/zimmer.asp, March 2000.

"Hans Zimmer Biography," http://www.mediaventures.com/htmls/zimmer_bs.html, March 2000.

"Hans Zimmer," http://www.german-way.com/cinema/zimmer.html, June 2000.

"The Hans Zimmer Worship Page," http://www.lionking.org/~zimmer, June 2000.

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Hans Zimmer is a pioneer in computer technology, digital synthesizers, and electronic keyboards. His successful integration of digital electronics with traditional orchestral music can be heard in over 65 popular, successful, and critically acclaimed films and television shows. Despite his lack of formal training, Zimmer currently ranks among the highest paid and most fiercely sought-after Hollywood composers. His scores range from quiet and sentimental to loud and pulse-raising. In Film Score Monthly, Zimmer described himself as a "loose cannon—all over the place. I can do action movies and romantic comedies. And I'm a good collaborator—which means I'm cantankerous and opinionated. I compose from a point of view. Point of view is the most important thing to have, and it doesn't necessarily have to be the director's point of view." Zimmer's versatile sampling style and emotional attunement to the film themes contribute to his ongoing success and market appeal. His mixing of genres extends to his music education, which he describes as growing up with classical music, but reaching adolescence in rock and roll.

Zimmer has been playing piano since the age of three. By the time he was six, he knew he wanted to be a composer. His family moved all over Europe until he was 14, when they settled in London. He began his musical career in London during his late teens, composing advertising jingles. In the 1970s, he stepped onto the rock music scene and reached success with the hit song, "Video Killed the Radio Star" (1979); he also made an album entitled The Age of Plastic for the band The Buggles and promoted the use of computers live on stage with the groups Tangerine Dream and Ultravox before turning to film scores.

He ventured into film soundtracks in the 1980s with electronic effects for Jerzy Skolimowski's Moonlighting (1982). With the film composer Stanley Myers (best known for The Deerhunter), Zimmer began to fuse two musical forms, electronic and classical. Together they created Lillie Yard Studio in London to advance digital music technology. Collaborating with Myers, Zimmer created scores for Success Is The Best Revenge (1984) and Nicholas Roeg's Insignificance (1985). In the mid-1980s, Zimmer produced the score for Stephen Frear's quirky art-house film, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). He worked with David Byrne and Ryiuichi Sakamoto to produce the music for Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987). He also composed the music for the Faye Dunaway and Klaus Maria Brandauer feature, Burning Secret (1988). Zimmer clearly was influenced by his apprenticeship with Myers; he has founded his own company, Media Ventures, in the early 1990s to assist fledgling talent in the film music industry.

Zimmer went solo with his haunting tribal anthems for an epic, groundbreaking film about the historic struggle in South Africa, A World Apart (1988). His music quickly caught Hollywood's attention: within the next year, he received Oscar nominations for the scores of Rain Man (1988) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Zimmer credits his break into Hollywood to Barry Levinson: "When you are European wanting to break into the Hollywood film business you don't stand a chance. But Barry Levinson gave me a shot in Rain Man, and that was very gracious and courageous."

The African-inspired rhythms of Disney's blockbuster, The Lion King (1994), for which he was music supervisor, song arranger, and producer, earned Zimmer his only Academy Award to date. It took him took about three and a half weeks to compose the music. The Lion King also won the Golden Globe, Chicago Film Critics Award, two Grammys, American Music Award for Best Album of the Year, and a Tony nomination for Best Original Score for The Lion King on Broadway. He received a Grammy for his Crimson Tide (1995) soundtrack, which features a majestic symphonic score and a large choir, as well as powerful 3-D sound effects that enhance the on-screen action and suspense. In the early 1990s, Zimmer also worked on compelling and invigorating music/scores for Bird on a Wire, John Schlesinger's suspenseful Pacific Heights, and Days of Thunder, starring Tom Cruise. His synthesizing can be heard in the background of Regarding Henry and Peter Weir's Green Card. Zimmer's dreamy, evocative, and emotional music enhances Ridley Scott's Thelma and Louise (1991) and Richard Donner's poignant Radio Flyer (1992). Penny Marshall's A League of Their Own, a film about the first female baseball league, starring Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, and Madonna also features a score by Zimmer. Zimmer has also ventured into the light and emotional, penning the infectious score for Barry Levingson's Toys (1992) starring Robin Williams, and Muppet Treasure Island (1996).

Zimmer has also placed his mark on films outside of Hollywood. Zimmer composed the score for his second South African film, The Power of One, directed by John Avildsen in 1992. He has worked with director Percy Adlon on Younger and Younger (1993), and with Billie August on Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997).

Zimmer was been frequently recognized for his scores, earning Oscar nominations for The Preacher's Wife (1996) and As Good As It Gets (1997). For the latter he lost out to the soundtrack for the blockbuster adventure Titanic. Zimmer was twice nominated in 1999 for Best Score Oscars for Terrence Malick's phenomenal The Thin Red Line (1998) and Disney's animated telling of the Ten Commandments, The Prince of Egypt (1998), for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination. The elegiac, lyrical music in Thin Red Line combines simple American hymns, indigenous music from the Solomon Islands, orchestral compositions with rich bass and cello lines, and a complete absence of the usual militaristic flourishes of brass, marching rhythms, and fanfares to create a tone poem that works magic with Malick's somber portrayal of the losses and anguish of war.

In 1997 Zimmer became head of the music department at DreamWorks SKG. Of the music he has composed, Zimmer claims to be proudest of A World Apart, Driving Miss Daisy and Crimson Tide.

—Jill Gillespie