Thomas Newman

Thomas Newman (born March 20, 1955) is an American composer whose film music has become closely associated with spare, textural orchestration and distinctive instrumental colors. He was born in Los Angeles into the Newman musical family: his father, Alfred Newman, was a major Hollywood composer and music director; his older brother David Newman and cousin Randy Newman are also composers. He studied at the University of Southern California and earned a master’s degree in composition from Yale University, where he studied with Jacob Druckman.

Newman’s first feature-film score was for the 1984 drama Reckless, directed by James Foley. His early credits included Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) and The Lost Boys (1987), but his reputation expanded sharply with Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Its score, built around restrained piano, strings, and recurring melodic fragments, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. He was nominated again for Little Women (1994), American Beauty (1999), Road to Perdition (2002), Finding Nemo (2003), Lemony’s Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), The Good German (2006), WALL-E (2008), Skyfall (2012), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Bridge of Spies (2015), and 1917 (2019).

His score for American Beauty won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music and a Grammy Award, while his work on Skyfall earned another BAFTA nomination. In 2002, Newman received the Richard Kirk Award from BMI Film & TV Awards, recognizing career achievement. His Academy Award record is unusually extensive: he has received fifteen competitive nominations for original score or original song, without a win.

Newman has repeatedly worked with director Sam Mendes, scoring American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Skyfall, Spectre, and 1917. For Mendes’s 1917, a First World War drama constructed to appear as a continuous journey, Newman’s music supports the film’s movement across No Man’s Land and its night-time ruined-town sequence; the score brought him Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Oscar nominations. He also composed for Pixar’s Finding Nemo and WALL-E, creating markedly different sound worlds: the former combines orchestral writing with aquatic atmosphere, while WALL-E uses electronic textures, orchestra, and the song “Down to Earth,” co-written with Peter Gabriel. Beyond cinema, Newman wrote music for the HBO series Six Feet Under, including its theme, which won the 2002 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music. His score for the series was also released as an album. Newman also scored the acclaimed 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption.