Hans Zimmer

• 1. Introduction

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  Hans Zimmer, the German film composer born on the 12th of September 1957, once set out to write a sound that people would truly hate. His own words were: "I wanted to write something people would truly hate." The target was the villain in The Dark Knight, the Joker. His answer was a single note, played on the cello by his long-time colleague Martin Tillman.

  Zimmer has composed music for more than 150 films since the 1980s, yet as a child he took piano lessons only briefly. He is also a music producer, and his sound blends electronic instruments with traditional orchestral writing. How did a restless keyboard player from the edges of British new wave come to shape the way big films sound? Why does he share credit so freely, and where does he go to find the sounds nobody has used before? The answers begin with a childhood piano that was never safe from its owner.

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• 2. Piano And Chainsaws

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  In a 2002 interview, Zimmer explained why his piano lessons did not last. He said, "either I was going to kill the teacher, or he was going to kill me". He was born in Frankfurt, West Germany, and spent his early childhood in Königstein-Falkenstein. He played at home, but he disliked the discipline of formal teaching.

  In a February 2013 interview with Mashable, he described his parents as an odd and useful pairing. His mother was very musical, basically a musician. His father was an engineer and an inventor. Zimmer recalled: "So I grew up modifying the piano, shall we say, which made my mother gasp in horror, and my father would think it was fantastic when I would attach chainsaws and stuff like that to the piano because he thought it was an evolution in technology."

  In a 2006 interview with the German television station ZDF, he spoke about loss. "My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend."

  At the 1999 Berlin Film Festival, Zimmer said in a speech that he is Jewish. He added that his mother survived World War II because she escaped from Germany to the United Kingdom in 1939. In a May 2014 interview he said that growing up Jewish in post-war Germany was difficult. He remarked, "I think my parents were always wary of me telling the neighbors."

  His schooling crossed borders. He attended the Ecole d'Humanité, an international boarding school in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. As a teenager he moved to London and attended Hurtwood House school. Along the way, the film scores of Ennio Morricone made a deep impression, and he has named Once Upon a Time in the West as the score that made him want to write for films.

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• 3. From Jingles To Rain Man

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  Zimmer began his career in the 1970s, playing keyboards and synthesizers with a band called Krakatoa. He then worked with the Buggles, a new wave band formed in London in 1977 by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley. He appears briefly in the video for their 1979 song "Video Killed the Radio Star".

  An Italian new wave band called Krisma came next. Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser had formed it in 1976, and Zimmer was a featured synthesist on its third album, Cathode Mamma. He also played in a band called Helden with Warren Cann of Ultravox. In 1984, Zimmer on keyboards and Cann on drums were invited to join the Spanish group Mecano for a live show in Segovia. Two songs from that concert appeared on Mecano: En Concierto, released in 1985 only in Spain. In 1985 he also contributed to the Shriekback album Oil and Gold.

  In 1980, Zimmer co-produced a single for the UK punk band The Damned, "History of the World, Part 1". It also appeared on their LP The Black Album. The credits described his efforts as "Over-Produced by Hans Zimmer."

  While living in London, he wrote advertising jingles for Air-Edel Associates. In the 1980s he partnered with Stanley Myers, a prolific film composer who scored more than sixty films. The two co-founded the Lillie Yard recording studio in London. Together they worked on fusing the traditional orchestral sound with electronic instruments. Their films included Moonlighting in 1982, Success Is the Best Revenge in 1984, and Insignificance and My Beautiful Laundrette, both in 1985.

  Zimmer's first solo score was Terminal Exposure, made for director Nico Mastorakis in 1987, and he wrote its songs too. That same year he acted as score producer on The Last Emperor, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.

  Also in 1987, he and Sandy McClelland composed the theme for the television game show Going for Gold. It became one of his most durable British works. Zimmer told the BBC: "Going for Gold was a lot of fun. It's the sort of stuff you do when you don't have a career yet. God, I just felt so lucky because this thing paid my rent for the longest time."

  The turning point arrived with the 1988 film Rain Man. Director Barry Levinson needed a composer, and his wife heard the soundtrack CD of A World Apart, an anti-apartheid drama scored by Zimmer. Levinson liked what he heard and hired him. Zimmer built the Rain Man score mostly from a Fairlight CMI synthesizer mixed with steel drums. He recalled: "It was a road movie, and road movies usually have jangly guitars or a bunch of strings. I kept thinking don't be bigger than the characters. Try to keep it contained."

  The score earned an Academy Award nomination in 1989, and the film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. A year later, Zimmer scored Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy, which also won Best Picture. Every sound in that score came from synthesizers and samplers that Zimmer played himself.

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• 4. Sounds From Everywhere

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  The slide guitar of Pete Haycock gives the Thunderbird theme its character in Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scott's 1991 film. Zimmer had been a fan of Haycock as a teenager. Their partnership continued on the scores for K2 and Drop Zone.

  For Tony Scott's 1993 film True Romance, Zimmer built a theme on Gassenhauer by Carl Orff. That piece had already been used in the 1973 film Badlands, another story of a young couple on the run after a violent crime. Zimmer's version is played on nine marimbas, and its gentle tone contrasts sharply with the film's violence.

  For the 1992 film The Power of One, Zimmer travelled to Africa to record African choirs and drums. That work drew the attention of Walt Disney Animation Studios, which asked him to score The Lion King in 1994. It was his first animated film. He wanted to record in South Africa, but the work on The Power of One had left him with a police record there "for doing 'subversive' movies". Disney executives feared he would be killed if he went. The choir recordings were instead organised during a visit by Lebo M.

  The Lion King won Zimmer an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe and two Grammys. In 1997 the score was adapted into a Broadway musical, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1998. It has grossed $853.8 million, more than any other Broadway show. In 2019 Zimmer scored the photorealistic animated remake directed by Jon Favreau.

  His next animated project, in 1998, was The Prince of Egypt from DreamWorks Animation. Zimmer introduced the Israeli Yemenite singer Ofra Haza to the directors. They found her so beautiful that they designed one of the film's characters to look like her.

  While scoring The Last Samurai, Zimmer felt his knowledge of Japanese music was very limited. The more he researched, the less he felt he knew. He took his draft to Japan for feedback and was shocked when people asked how he knew so much about Japanese music.

  Daily Variety reported that for the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, Zimmer bought an out-of-tune piano for 200 dollars. He used it throughout the scoring process because of its quirkiness. For the 2011 sequel, A Game of Shadows, he and director Guy Ritchie researched authentic Romani music by visiting Slovakia, Italy and France. Romani musicians play the music heard in the film.

  For Christopher Nolan's 2017 film Dunkirk, the source was something much smaller. Nolan had given Zimmer a watch, and he based part of the score on a recording of its ticking.

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• 5. Shared Credit

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  In December 2008, Zimmer persuaded the Academy to reverse its decision not to nominate The Dark Knight for Best Original Score. The scores for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both co-composed with James Newton Howard, had been disqualified because too many composers appeared on the cue sheet. Zimmer argued that building a modern film score is collaborative, and that credit should reach the range of people who helped make it.

  That argument came from the way he runs his working life. He founded Remote Control Productions, formerly known as Media Ventures, and works with other composers through it. He also heads the film music division at DreamWorks Pictures and DreamWorks Animation. His studio in Santa Monica, California, holds a wide range of computers and keyboards, so demo versions of scores can be made quickly.

  In a 2006 interview with Soundtrack.net, he described the original idea. "Originally I had this idea that it should be possible to create some kind of community around this kind of work." Blurring titles such as composer, arranger and orchestrator helped people collaborate. Sole credit was not important to him. On Gladiator he gave Lisa Gerrard a co-credit because her presence and contributions were very influential, even though she did not write the main theme.

  The Pirates of the Caribbean series shows collaboration at its most tangled. In early 2003, producer Jerry Bruckheimer approached Zimmer while he was scoring The Last Samurai. Bruckheimer had already worked with him on Crimson Tide, Days of Thunder, The Rock and Pearl Harbor. He had finished shooting The Curse of the Black Pearl but was unhappy with the music by Alan Silvestri, and he wanted a replacement score.

  Zimmer was too busy, so Klaus Badelt, a colleague at Media Ventures, composed and supervised the music instead. Zimmer supplied some themes that were used in the film, although he has no on-screen credit. He then scored the next three films, Dead Man's Chest, At World's End and On Stranger Tides, working with Rodrigo y Gabriela on the last one.

  The 2014 film The Amazing Spider-Man 2 pushed the idea further. Zimmer wrote its music alongside a group called The Magnificent Six: Pharrell Williams, Johnny Marr, Michael Einziger, Junkie XL, Andrew Kawczynski and Steve Mazzaro. On Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch took over the scoring after Jóhann Jóhannsson left the project.

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• 6. Famous Cues

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  The Thin Red Line, from 1998, began with an unusual request. Director Terrence Malick wanted the music before he started filming, so Zimmer recorded six and a half hours of it. The nine-minute cue at the film's climax, "The Journey to the Line", rests on a recurring theme of four chords. Over it runs a "ticking clock" motif that has appeared in many later Zimmer scores.

  Trailers and video games have borrowed the piece many times. Film makers also like to use it as a temp track for dramatic scenes, which earned it the nickname "the forbidden cue".

  Three years earlier, the main theme of Tony Scott's Crimson Tide had won Zimmer a Grammy Award. It leans heavily on synthesizers instead of orchestral instruments.

  For Inception in 2010, Zimmer electronically manipulated the song "Non, je ne regrette rien". The score's horn sound, which he likened to "huge foghorns over a city", became a popular feature in film trailers. He observed: "It's funny how that sort of thing becomes part of the zeitgeist. But I suppose that's exactly what trailers are looking for: something iconic, lasts less than a second, and shakes the seats in the theater."

  His score for Christopher Nolan's 2014 film Interstellar earned another Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. Nolan and Zimmer have worked together on six films, starting with Batman Begins in 2005.

  In March 2016, Zimmer told BBC News he was retiring from superhero films after Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which he co-composed with Junkie XL. About that film he said, "This one was very hard for me to do, to try to find new language". He later scored Dark Phoenix, directed by Simon Kinberg, contradicting his own statement. He has also said he turned down multiple offers from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He was "looking for other things", and scheduling played a role.

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• 7. Beyond The Screen

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  In 2012, Zimmer composed and produced the music for the 84th Academy Awards with Pharrell Williams of The Neptunes. He also wrote a new version of the theme for ABC World News. That year saw a darker moment too. The Dark Knight Rises was screening in Aurora, Colorado, when a shooting occurred at the theater. Zimmer described himself as "devastated" and said, "I just feel so incredibly sad for these people." He recorded "Aurora", a choral arrangement of a theme from the film's soundtrack, to raise money for the victims.

  Television and festivals followed. In March 2013 the series The Bible was broadcast with music co-composed by Zimmer, Lorne Balfe and Lisa Gerrard. In July 2014 he wrote the Tomorrowland Hymn for the tenth anniversary of the Tomorrowland festival. He also composed the theme for the boxing series The Contender, and in October 2000 he had played live with an orchestra and choir for the first time. That concert took place at the 27th Annual Flanders International Film Festival in Ghent.

  Video games brought a new audience. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was his first game project, and he worked on it with Lorne Balfe. For Crysis 2, he collaborated with Borislav Slavov and Tilman Sillescu.

  In 2016 he composed the main theme for the BBC nature documentary Planet Earth II, presented by David Attenborough. The 2017 follow-up, Blue Planet II, was scored with Jacob Shea and David Fleming. In an October 2022 interview with Kirsty Wark on BBC Radio, Zimmer said: "I think the only work that I've done that's worth anything is working for Sir David Attenborough on those programmes, because it's the only thing that actually means something to this world and ultimately might have an impact on how we approach this world."

  In 2022, Camila Cabello joined him on "Take Me Back Home" for the documentary series Frozen Planet II. The singer Aurora contributed vocals to the soundtrack and performed the song with Zimmer at the Royal Albert Hall during the BBC's Earth Proms. Also in 2016 he composed the main theme for the Netflix production The Crown, and he released an online course on the basics of film scoring.

  Sport called as well. In 2018 he wrote the FIFA anthem "Living Football", which also introduced television coverage of the World Cup in Russia. He remixed the UEFA Champions League Anthem with the rapper Vince Staples for FIFA 19. On the 26th of February 2020, Major League Soccer released an anthem he composed for its 25th season.

  In June 2019, BMW hired him to create sounds for its Vision M Next concept car. He produced and composed warning sounds for the electric line, for passengers inside and for pedestrians outside who might not hear the car approaching.

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• 8. Honors And Latest Work

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  In December 2010, Zimmer received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He dedicated it to his publicist and long-term friend Ronni Chasen, who had been shot and killed in Beverly Hills the previous month.

  Earlier honors include the Richard Kirk Career Achievement Award from the BMI Film Music Awards in 1996. In 2003 he received the National Board of Review Career Achievement Award, the Frederick Loewe Award for Film Composing and the ASCAP Henry Mancini Award. The Daily Telegraph named him one of the Top 100 Living Geniuses in 2007. In June 2016 he was one of the inaugural winners of the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.

  In November 2017, a main-belt asteroid, (495253) 2013 OC8, was named "Hanszimmer". Polish astronomers Michał Kusiak and Michał Żołnowski had discovered it. On the 2nd of October 2018, Zimmer received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. That year he also won the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award at Hollywood in Vienna, and in 2019 he was inducted as a Disney Legend. By 2022 he had twelve Academy Award nominations and two wins, at the 67th and 94th Academy Awards.

  His private life has had its own chapters. His first wife was the model Vicki Carolin, with whom he has a daughter, and they divorced in 1992. He married Suzanne Zimmer in 1995, and they have three children. He filed for divorce on the 3rd of April 2020. On the 15th of June 2023, he proposed to his partner Dina De Luca on stage at London's O2 Arena during one of his shows.

  On the 6th of January 2020, Zimmer took over the score for the James Bond film No Time to Die after composer Dan Romer left. He noted that the three Batman films felt like three movies to audiences but were twelve years of his life. Daniel Craig had given sixteen years to Bond, and Zimmer wanted to honour the man and the work.

  His score for Dune in 2021 won his second Academy Award for Best Original Score, and the Armenian duduk features heavily in it and in the 2024 sequel. In 2025 he scored F1, the sports film starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski. He is also one of three composers, with Omer Benyamin and Steven Doar, on Zack Snyder's upcoming film The Last Photograph. Meanwhile, Zimmer has started writing music for a third Dune film, while Denis Villeneuve works on the script.

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