Overview (3)

Mini Bio (1)

Spouse (2)

Vicki Carolin (19 March 1982 - 7 April 1992) ( divorced) ( 1 child) Suzanne Zimmer (? - present) ( filed for divorce) ( 3 children)

Trade Mark (6)

Seamlessly mixes synthesizers with real instruments and soloists. Often uses solo cello and acoustic/electric guitar



Frequently works with DreamWorks Animation



Famous for his frequent use of what is known as a "Bwaum" wherein a major plot point is revealed and the music blasts out a single note loudly



Frequent use of the 'Shepard Tone' to raise tension. This is an auditory illusion of which provides the sense of a note constantly rising in pitch.



Trivia (25)

Last name means 'room' in German.





Hans' longtime business partner, Jay Rifkin , filed a $10 million suit against him for conspiring to take business for himself. Because of this lawsuit, Media Ventures changed its name to Remote Control. [December 2003]



Gladiator (2000) became into one of the best selling film score albums of all time.



His iconic theme "Journey to the Line" from Der schmale Grat (1998) is heavily used in trailers and various other media. This theme was born out of trial and error. Terrence Malick , the director of Der schmale Grat (1998) had been dissatisfied with Zimmer's results and had him continuously rework melodies and come up with various approaches. Thus "Journey to the Line" was finally born. Many of his latter scores would go on to bear an uncanny resemblance to this classic Thin Red Line theme.

He wrote music for a a 4-minute Maybach commercial.





Fans and industry insiders in the film music world credit Crimson Tide - In tiefster Gefahr (1995) as a turning point in both his career and the scoring business. The Grammy-winning score, often heard in trailers since, was a departure from the norm, making use of digital synthesizers, electronic keyboards, and the latest computer technology to digitally produce a rousing score with traditional orchestral arrangements.



The reason why he was chosen for the movie Lauras Stern (2004), was because, in an interview, he said that he feels that German producers forgot him for composing to a German language movie. One of the producers read the interview and he immediately asked him to do the movie.

Completely self-taught, he learned everything he knows through collaboration and experimenting.



John Powell, Mark Mancina,

He pushes collaboration between composers because that is how he learned. Every composer that has come out of Media Ventures learned by working with him on various scores by conducting, writing additional music, or even co-composing with him. Harry Gregson-Williams Klaus Badelt and Steve Jablonsky are just a few composers who are now doing solo work after expanding from Media Ventures.



He told in an interview that he would retire for some years after The Dark Knight (2008), saying he has been exhausted in the past years. He also said that he wants to help young composers and would produce their scores. His future plan is also about touring the world holding concerts with his own music.

Was nominated for Film Composer of the Year in 2006 by the International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA).



Was included on the list of "Top 100 Living Geniuses" published by The Daily Telegraph (2007).



He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6908 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on December 8, 2010.



Son of Brigitte (Weil) and Hans Joachim Zimmer, who founded a textiles company, Zimmer AG Frankfurt am Main. His mother Brigitte left Germany in the 1930s as a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, living in England during the war.



He is the only composer to do scores for Batman films under two different directors.



He is the only composer to have done scores for films about Batman and Superman.



He has written and composed scores for all of DC Comics' trinity of heroes: Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.



Has 5 children: one daughter, Zoe, with his ex-wife Vicki Carolin; sons Jake and Max, and daughters Brigitte and Anabelle, with his current wife Suzanne Zimmer.



Personal Quotes (22)



I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King (1994), I wrote over four hours' worth of tunes, and they were really pretty - but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide - In tiefster Gefahr (1995), on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted.

I wake up around noon, light a cigarette, get a cup of coffee, sit in the bathtub for an hour and daydream, and I usually come up with some ideas... It's a very irresponsible life. The only decisions I make are about the notes I'm writing.



I don't drive, so one of my assistants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wall telling me how much time I have left, and how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work on. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you're not thinking about it.



If something happened where I couldn't write music anymore, it would kill me. It's not just a job. It's not just a hobby. It's why I get up in the morning.



You have to remain flexible, and you must be your own critic at all times.





[on his score for Hannibal (2001)] This is the best love theme I've ever written, I keep telling everyone this is a romantic comedy, but nobody believes me.



[on his score for Batman Begins (2005)] I think this one has more electronics in it than anything else. I didn't want to do straight orchestra because Batman, he's not a straight character. I mean where do you get those wonderful toys from and the technology? So I thought I could embrace a bit more technology in this one... there isn't a straight orchestral note on this score.

[on his previous Batman scores] Nobody ever mentions the Elliot Goldenthal scores. And of course, I'm not mentioning any of that either, because quite honestly I didn't go and look at the old Batman movies again.



I am not saying it is a bad movie or good movie, but it is an odd movie. All of the music was written before Terry would edit a scene. That was just how he wanted to work. It was a very odd way of working for me, because I had to lead the charge up the hill all the time. It gets a little daunting.





[on his score for The Lion King (1994)] I'd never written for talking fuzzy animals before. I knew how to write to human emotions but these were animals. It took me a while to sort of get over that and do what you do which is just treat them like human characters.



[on his score for The Lion King (1994)] I thought how do we deal with in a children's movie the idea that a father dies and make an emotional yet not horrifying experience. And it's very simple. It's my point of view because my dad dropped dead when I was six. I had nobody to talk to about it.

If the secret should be known, which is not much of a secret at all, this is my hobby I love doing this. Anything else feels like work to me.



When you write a theme one of the things you want to do is you want to see how much life it really has. How many possibilities there are. Can it speak to you in joy? Can it speak to you in sorrow? Can it be love? Can it be hate? Can you say all these things with just a few notes? That's the thing when you figure out if a tune is any good or not. Does it have more than one shallow little character? Does it have just one little thing to tell you. Can it get underneath there under your skin? Can it get dark? Can it talk about the death of a father or something like that.





[on his score for The Lion King (1994)] The main emphasis to me was how we were going to get, in a children's movie, to the idea that a father dies and make it an emotional yet not horrifying experience but make it something that children might want to start asking some questions about. It's very simple. It's my point of view because my dad dropped dead when I was six and I had nobody to talk to about it. So, it's a very personal sort of thing.

You have to realize I like doing big movies that appear on a big screen. So the visuals and the audio have to be of a certain quality before I start to get excited about the thing.



The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.



When movies first came out, maybe they were in black and white and there wasn't any sound and people were saying the theater is still the place to be. But now movies and theater have found their own place in the world. They are each legitimate art forms.



With animated film, you have to create the sonic world; there's nothing there. You get to color things in more and you're allowed to overreach yourself a little bit more, and it's great fun.



Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.



You come from a conversation with the director, and you're all enthusiastic, because it's all new possibilities, opportunities, great ideas, etc. And then you get into this room, and you sit in front of this [computer], and it's all gone and you just go "oh my god, I have no idea what to do". But you need the courage of starting somewhere.



I write film music. I don't do brain surgery. I don't cure cancer. I just write a little bit of film music.



Nobody beats me up as much as I beat myself up. This is what I love doing and I have one life to do it in. And I better do it right. I better do it well.

