Thomas Montgomery Newman was born on October 20,1955 and is an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores.
29 Facts About Thomas Newman
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Thomas Newman composed the music for the 2003 HBO miniseries Angels in America.
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Thomas Newman has been nominated for four Golden Globes, and has won two BAFTAs, six Grammys and an Emmy Award.
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Thomas Newman was honored with the Richard Kirk award at the 2000 BMI Film and TV Awards.
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Thomas Newman's achievements have contributed to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.
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Thomas Newman 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, and his first cousin, once removed, Joey Newman.
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Thomas 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.
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At first, Thomas Newman was more interested in musical theater than in film composition, working with Sondheim in Broadway plays.
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In 1992, Thomas Newman composed the score for Robert Altman's The Player and Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman.
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In 1999, Thomas Newman composed the score to Sam Mendes' first feature film American Beauty, created using mainly percussion instruments.
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Thomas Newman received a fourth Oscar nomination for this score, and although he lost again, he did receive a Grammy and a BAFTA.
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Thomas Newman was nominated consecutively for a further three Academy Awards, for Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition, Andrew Stanton's Finding Nemo, and Brad Silberling's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
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At the Oscar ceremony, he appeared in the opening segment by Errol Morris, who jokingly stated that Thomas Newman had been nominated for and failed to win an Oscar eight times.
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Thomas 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.
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Thomas 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.
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Thomas Newman was nominated in the Original Score category with two other veteran composers, James Newton Howard and Danny Elfman, both of whom have been nominated for several Oscars but each time unsuccessfully.
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In 2012, Thomas Newman scored John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
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Thomas Newman scored the 23rd James Bond movie Skyfall, which celebrates the film franchise's 50th anniversary.
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In 2015, he scored John Madden's The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, marking the first time Thomas Newman has scored a sequel to a film he wrote the score for.
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Also that year, Thomas Newman returned to score Sam Mendes' 24th James Bond movie Spectre, the sequel to Skyfall.
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Thomas Newman collaborated with Steven Spielberg for Bridge of Spies, marking Newman's first collaboration with Spielberg and the first Spielberg film not to feature a musical score from his long-time composer John Williams, since the production of The Color Purple in 1985.
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In 2016, Thomas Newman scored the motion picture Morten Tyldum's Passengers starring Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, and Laurence Fishburne, for which he received his 14th Oscar nomination.
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Three years later, Thomas Newman reunited with Sam Mendes for his war film 1917, for which Thomas Newman received his 6th BAFTA and 15th Oscar nominations.
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Thomas Newman is fond of incorporating unusual instruments such as the zither, hurdy-gurdy, psaltery and hammered dulcimer, or unexpected sounds, like Aboriginal chants and the chirping of cicadas.
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Thomas Newman has composed music for television, including theme music for the series Boston Public and the miniseries Angels in America.
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Thomas Newman wrote the theme for the HBO series Newsroom.
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Thomas Newman wrote a commissioned concert work for orchestra, Reach Forth Our Hands, for the 1996 Cleveland Bicentennial.
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Thomas Newman composed the incidental music for the Washington Shakespeare Theatre Company's 2014 production of As You Like It, directed by Michael Attenborough and starring Zoe Waites.
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Thomas Newman collaborated with composer and multi-instrumentalist Rick Cox in an electro-acoustic album 35 Whirlpools Below Sound; which is released under the label Cold Blue Music in 2014.