Thomas Newman

Born in Los Angeles, California, Newman is the youngest son of composer Alfred Newman (1900–1970), who won the Academy Award for Best Original Score nine times, and Martha Louis Montgomery (1920–2005).

He is a member of a film-scoring dynasty in Hollywood that includes his father Alfred, older brother David Newman, younger sister Maria Newman, uncles Lionel Newman and Emil Newman, cousin Randy Newman (also known as a singer and songwriter), and his first cousin, once removed, Joey Newman.

His paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and his mother was from Mississippi.

During their upbringing, Martha Newman took her sons to violin lessons in the San Fernando Valley every weekend.

Thomas Montgomery Newman (born October 20, 1955) is an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores.

Newman later studied composition and orchestration for two years at the University of Southern California, before transferring to Yale University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1977 and a Master of Music in 1978.

While at Yale, he met composer Stephen Sondheim, who became an early mentor.

Newman and his wife Ann Marie have three children.

They reside in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.

At first, Newman was more interested in musical theater than in film composition, working with Sondheim in Broadway plays.

Lionel, who succeeded Alfred as music director for 20th Century Fox, gave Thomas his first scoring assignment on a 1979 episode of the series The Paper Chase.

In 1983, John Williams, who was a friend of both Alfred and Lionel, invited Newman to work on Return of the Jedi, orchestrating the scene in which Darth Vader dies.

Afterward Newman met producer Scott Rudin in New York City and Rudin invited him to compose the score for Reckless (1984).

Newman said that he thought "it was a tough job, at first" for requiring him to "develop vocabularies and a sense of procedure", only getting comfortable with writing scores "and not fraudulent in my efforts" after eight years.

In a career that has spanned over four decades, he has scored numerous films including The Player (1992), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998), American Beauty and The Green Mile (both 1999), Pay It Forward (2000), In the Bedroom (2001), Road to Perdition and White Oleander (both 2002), Finding Nemo (2003) and its sequel Finding Dory (2016), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Cinderella Man (2005), WALL-E (2008), the James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), Bridge of Spies (2015), 1917 (2019), and Elemental (2023).

In 1992, Newman composed the scores for The Player and Scent of a Woman.

In 1994, he received his first Academy Award nominations with the scores for The Shawshank Redemption and Little Women.

He also scored The War.

In 1996, he scored Unstrung Heroes, receiving yet another Oscar nomination.

In 1998, he scored The Horse Whisperer as well as Meet Joe Black.

In 1999, Newman composed the score to American Beauty, created using mainly percussion instruments; this was the first of several collaborations with director Sam Mendes.

Newman believed the score helped move the film along without disturbing the "moral ambiguity" of the script, saying "It was a real delicate balancing act in terms of what music worked to preserve that.".

He received a fourth Oscar nomination for this score, and although he lost again (to John Corigliano for The Red Violin), he did receive a Grammy and a BAFTA.

His critical and commercial success continued in the years to follow, which included scores for films directed by celebrated independent filmmakers such as Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich), and Todd Field (In the Bedroom).

He also composed the music for the HBO drama series Six Feet Under (2001) and 2003 miniseries Angels in America.

Throughout his career, he has collaborated extensively with directors such as Sam Mendes, Andrew Stanton, Frank Darabont, Steven Soderbergh, Jon Avnet, John Madden and John Lee Hancock.

He was nominated consecutively for a further three Academy Awards, for Road to Perdition (2002; his second collaboration with Sam Mendes), Finding Nemo (2003), and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004).

However, he lost on each occasion, to Elliot Goldenthal (for Frida), Howard Shore (for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), and Jan A. P. Kaczmarek (for Finding Neverland).

In 2006, he teamed once again with Todd Field for Little Children and Steven Soderbergh for The Good German (and was nominated for latter).

At the Oscar ceremony, he appeared in the opening segment by Errol Morris, who jokingly stated that Newman had been nominated for and failed to win an Oscar eight times.

Newman replied: "No, I've failed seven but this will be my eighth", and indeed, he again lost, this time to Gustavo Santaolalla for Babel.

His first score since The Good German was for Towelhead.

In 2008, he scored the animated film WALL-E, collaborating for the second time with director Andrew Stanton (with the first collaboration being Finding Nemo).

The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (as had Nemo).

Newman received two Oscar nominations: one for Best Original Score, and another for Best Original Song for "Down to Earth", which he co-wrote with Peter Gabriel.

He was nominated in the Original Score category with two other veteran composers, James Newton Howard and Danny Elfman, both of whom have also been nominated for several Oscars but each time unsuccessfully.

Newman lost both the score and song nominations to A. R. Rahman for his work on Slumdog Millionaire.

He and Peter Gabriel did however win a Grammy for "Down to Earth".

In 2008, he also scored Revolutionary Road, a further collaboration with Mendes.

In 2009, he scored Brothers (the remake of the Susanne Bier film).