Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmeris a German composer and record producer. Since the 1980s, he has composed music for over 150 films. His works include The Lion King, for which he won Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1994, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, The Thin Red Line, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth12 September 1957
CityFrankfurt, Germany
CountryGermany
You always hear these stories of how Hollywood is so merciless on composers and how they all get beaten up. Nobody beats me up as much as I beat myself up. This is what I love doing and I have one life to do it in, and I better do it right. I better do it well.
A good score should have a point of view all of its own. It should transcend all that has gone before, stand on its own two feet and still serve the movie. A great soundtrack is all about communicating with the audience, but we all try to bring something extra to the movie that is not entirely evident on screen.
Trust me, if you're working on a $70 million movie and you're the last guy, you feel all that weight on your shoulders.
I try to communicate with the musicians the way I communicate with the filmmakers. I'm not going to say to them, can we be a little bit more presto here. Hang on, this should be a bit more exciting, or I try to explain the scene to them, or I try to explain the context the notes are supposed to live in.
Hollywood allows you to go and express yourself.
Information is floating around really fast. I write something, or a piece of my music comes out and I see people writing about it on the Internet as if I'm having a conversation with them. We've never met, but somehow, my music is communicating something to them. Very often, it really makes them feel something.
I loved this idea of always being a foreigner. There's this thing where people bring cultures, bring the music together. I love it when the music, when the cultures collide and something sort of new comes out of it.
When I was 13, when I was 14, when I was in England, yeah all I wanted to do was go and see The Who, go and see The Stones.
I have to give credit to Giorgio Moroder ; among the first to make us realize the importance of music in film.
I wake up around noon, light a cigarette, get a cup of coffee, sit in the bathtub for an hour and daydream, and I usually come up with some ideas... It's a very irresponsible life. The only decisions I make are about the notes I'm writing.
As opposed to being on the Internet, there's something really nice about reading a book or talking to authors.
The lack of education means, the lack of having something I can pull out of a drawer, means I have to find something in any movie I work on that is intensely personal.