1. Thelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor, best known for her collaboration over five decades with director Martin Scorsese.
22 Facts About Thelma Schoonmaker
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Thelma Schoonmaker has received numerous accolades, including three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and four ACE Eddie Awards.
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Thelma Schoonmaker has been honored with the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1997, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2014, and the BAFTA Fellowship in 2019.
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Thelma Schoonmaker has received a record nine nominations for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing and has won a record three times for Raging Bull, The Aviator, and The Departed.
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Thelma Schoonmaker has been nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Editing a record 11 times, winning twice for Raging Bull and Goodfellas.
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Thelma Schoonmaker was born on January 3,1940, in Algiers, the daughter of American parents, Thelma and Bertram Schoonmaker.
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In 1941, the family moved to the Dutch-Caribbean island of Aruba, where Thelma Schoonmaker's father continued to work for Standard Oil and her mother ran nursery schools.
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Thelma Schoonmaker was primarily raised in Aruba, in a community she described as "a colony of expatriates from over the world"; she spent part of her childhood in Portugal.
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Thelma Schoonmaker did not live in the United States until she was an adolescent in 1955, and was initially alienated and dumbfounded by American culture.
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Thelma Schoonmaker settled in Ridgewood, New Jersey and graduated in 1957 from Ridgewood High School.
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Thelma Schoonmaker was interested in a career in international diplomacy and began attending Cornell University in 1957, where she studied political science and the Russian language.
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Politically inclined and opinionated, Thelma Schoonmaker was opposed to the Vietnam War and supported the Civil rights movement.
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Thelma Schoonmaker passed the State Department exams but failed the final "stress test" when she expressed distaste for the South African policy of apartheid, a stance which did not sit well with those administering the tests.
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Thelma Schoonmaker responded to the advertisement and got the job.
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Thelma Schoonmaker went on to edit Scorsese's feature directorial debut, Who's That Knocking at My Door.
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Thelma Schoonmaker received her first major screen credits when she and Scorsese both became part of the editing team on Michael Wadleigh's seminal music festival documentary, 1970's Woodstock.
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The union's entry requirements included spending five years as an apprentice and three as an assistant, which Thelma Schoonmaker was unwilling to meet.
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Consequently, Thelma Schoonmaker did not work with Scorsese in a formal capacity in the 1970s; however, she did make an uncredited contribution to Taxi Driver.
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Thelma Schoonmaker was introduced to Michael Powell by Scorsese and London-based film producer Frixos Constantine.
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Since Powell's death, Thelma Schoonmaker has dedicated herself to preserving the films and honoring the legacy of her husband, who directed many classic films with his partner, Emeric Pressburger.
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Thelma Schoonmaker equaled the record for the most Oscar wins in the Best Film Editing category, shared with Ralph Dawson, Daniel Mandell, and Michael Kahn.
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Thelma Schoonmaker is the first woman to win multiple film editing Oscars.