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German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood’s most innovative musical talents.

He came to prominence in the late 80’s 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 the composer 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 pre-eminent 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).

Some of his other impressive scores include the WWII CGI turkey “Pearl Harbor” (2001), “The Ring” (2002), and four films directed by Ridley Scott; “Matchstick Men” (2003),” Hannibal” (2001), “Black Hawk Down” (2001), and “Thelma & Louise” (1991).

Last year, 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.

He now tours, conducting his music to appreciative audiences after leading a rather weird and isolated life. As he so succinctly puts it, “ Part of my first tour started because everybody was telling me ‘Hans you spent forty years in a dark, windowless room, you need to go out, you need to see the world!’. And the first night we were playing the show, four years ago, I looked around the room, and it was a dark, windowless room. Just with a lot of people in it. So I realized then that my fate is a dark windowless room. [laughs] This is very confusing to me

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. He and his wife live in Los Angeles and he is the father of four children.