Alexandre Desplat

Biography

Alexandre Desplat (born in Paris in 1961) is a French film composer and conductor whose work has shaped film scoring across two decades. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score, for The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape of Water, and his name is linked to a body of work that moves easily between small independent films and large commercial productions. Beyond cinema, he has written for the theatre, television, ballet and advertising, and has composed songs for several singers and actors.

Desplat's parents were a Frenchman from Sarlat-la-Canéda and a Greek poet from Athens. They met in the United States while both were students at the University of California, Berkeley, married in San Francisco, and settled in Paris. He started on the piano at five, took up the trumpet, and switched to the flute at nine. His tastes were broad, from Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy to jazz and world music. His first exposure to film scores came through the soundtracks his parents brought back from America, and as a teenager he collected Bernard Herrmann's music for Hitchcock. He decided to become a film composer after hearing John Williams's score for Star Wars in 1977. Other early influences included Maurice Jarre, Nino Rota and Georges Delerue.

His training was that of a conservatory composer. He studied musical analysis with Claude Ballif at the Conservatoire de Paris and took a summer course with Iannis Xenakis. In Los Angeles he worked with Jack Hayes, who introduced him to the recording world of Hollywood. While recording the music for his first film he met the violinist Dominique Lemonnier, who became his favourite soloist and artistic director, and whom he later married. Alongside his film work he has played and recorded jazz and bossa nova with musicians from other countries, and he has given master classes at La Sorbonne and the Royal College of Music in London.

His early career was mostly in French cinema, where he scored dozens of films during the 1990s and early 2000s. Several of these earned César nominations, including Un Héros Très Discret (1996) and Sur mes lèvres (2002), directed by Jacques Audiard, with whom he would work again. His breakthrough in Hollywood came in 2003 with Girl with a Pearl Earring, a drama set in seventeenth-century Delft around a fictional muse of Vermeer. Then came Syriana (2005), The Painted Veil, which won him the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, and The Queen (2006), directed by Stephen Frears, which earned his first Academy Award nomination. In 2007 he scored The Golden Compass and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. In 2008 came The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher's film, which gave him a second Oscar nomination.

Desplat also became known for large franchises and blockbusters. He scored Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010) and Part 2 (2011), the latter earning a Grammy nomination, after returning to work with David Yates. He scored The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) as well. His collaborations with very different directors are central to his reputation. With Wes Anderson he made Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014); with Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life (2011); with Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer (2010); with George Clooney, The Ides of March (2011); with Stephen Frears, Philomena (2013) and The King's Speech (2010); and with Gareth Edwards, Godzilla (2014). Argo (2012) brought Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. His score for The Imitation Game (2014) was also Oscar-nominated, and his win that year over another of his own scores was a rare event in the history of the awards.

His concert work is equally extensive. He has conducted his music with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Munich Symphony Orchestra. His first Concerto for Flute and Orchestra premiered in France in 2013, and he wrote Trois Études for piano, originally for Lang Lang. He has written music for the Comédie-Française and songs sung by artists such as Kate Beckinsale, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Catherine Ringer and Akhenaton. In 2014 it was announced that he would head the jury of the Venice International Film Festival. In 2016 he was made an Officer of the Ordre national du Mérite and a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2011 he had been named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

Desplat remains very active. In 2016 he stepped down from scoring the first anthology film of the new Star Wars films, Rogue One, because reshoots left him unavailable, and Michael Giacchino replaced him. In 2018 he won his second Academy Award for The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo del Toro, who later invited him to work on Pinocchio. Little Women (2019) brought another Oscar nomination, and he has continued to collaborate with Wes Anderson on films such as Isle of Dogs. He keeps studios in Los Angeles and Paris and lives in Paris, and he is the father of two daughters. His legacy lies in scores admired by critics and in a style that supports a story without overwhelming it.

Key films

• The King's Speech (2010)
• The Shape of Water (2017)
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
• Argo (2012)
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
• The Imitation Game (2014)