Danny Elfman

Danny Elfman is an A-list Hollywood film composer who has written the music for dozens of international blockbusters, works regularly with film-maker Tim Burton and wrote the theme music for the long-running television animation comedy 'The Simpsons'. He has won two Prime Time Emmy Awards and been nominated four times for Academy Awards, three times for Golden Globes and twice for BAFTAs. Known especially for his original and imaginative scores for fantasy films, he has been nominated 14 times for the Saturn Award for Best Music By the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films in America, winning on five occasions. He was born in Los Angeles and studied music in Africa before returning to California where he succeeded his older brother Richard Elfman as leader of a musical and performance outfit that came to be called Oingo Boingo with hit singles including 'Winning Side' (1988) and 'When the Lights Go Out' (1990). Richard turned to making films and in 1980 he asked his brother to write the music for his debut feature film 'Forbidden Zone'. That led to his being hired by Tim Burton to provide the score for his first movie, 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure' in 1985. He scored comedies such as Rodney Dangerfield's 'Back to School' (1986), Carl Reiner's 'Summer School' (1987) and Bill Murray's 'Scrooged' (1988) and crime pictures including Emilio Estevez's 'Wisdom' (1986) and Robert De Niro's 'Midnight Run' (1988) and went on to a long line of action adventures and animation hits. Nominations from the Science Fiction Academy include several for his work with Tim Burton including 'Beetlejuice' (1988) 'Edward Scissorhands' (1990) and 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' (2005) plus winners 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' (1993), 'Mars Attacks' (1997), 'Sleepy Hollow' (1999) and 'Frankenweenie' (2012). He also won the award for 'Men in Black' (1997) and 'Spider-Man' (2002) with nominations for 'Dolores Claiborne' (1995), 'Hulk' (2003), 'Spider-Man 2' (2004) and 'Oz the Great and Powerful' (2013). His score for Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland' earned him nominations at the BAFTAs, which also nominated him with John Kander and Fred Ebb for the 2003 musical 'Chicago', and the Golden Globes, which also gave him nods for 'The Night Before Christmas' and 'Big Fish' (2003). His television work has included the scores of 'The Flash' (1990), 'Beetlejuice' (1989), 'Batman: The Animated Series' (1992), 'Tales from the Crypt' (1989-1996) and 'Dilbert' (1999) plus themes for 'Desperate Housewives' (2004-2012) for which he won a Prime Time Emmy in 2005, and 'The Simpsons' (1989-) for which he was nominated. He won another Emmy in 2016 for an episode of 'Live from Lincoln Center' titled 'Danny Elfman's Music for the Films of Tim Burton'. In demand for top studio pictures, he has scored the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' franchise with 'Fifty Shades Darker: Original Motion Picture Score' reaching number 23 on Billboard's Soundtracks Chart. Action pictures include 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' (2015) and 'Justice League' (2017), which went to number eleven on the Soundtracks Chart. In June 2017, he debuted his first violin symphony, 'Eleven Eleven', co-commissioned by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Stanford Live, and in 2018 he received a commission from the Berlin Philharmonic Piano Quartet to compose another concert work.

Please enable Javascript to view this page competely.