Composer Ennio Morricone winner of the Best Original Score award for ''The Hateful Eight' poses in the press room during the 88th Annual Academy Awards at Loews Hollywood Hotel on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. Jason Merritt/Getty Images After clocking over 500 movie credits, legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone finally landed Oscar gold at this year's Academy Awards.

Winning for Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, he stated; "There isn't a great soundtrack without a great movie that inspires it. This is why I thank Quentin Tarantino for choosing me, as well as the producer Harvey Weinstein and the whole crew."

He also thanked fellow nominees: Carter Burwell forCarol, Jóhann Jóhannsson for Sicario, Ennio Morricone for The Hateful Eight, Thomas Newman for Bridge of Spies, and John Williams for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens.

This follows both a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for the same score, which partially utilises unused work from one of his most famous scores, for John Carpenter's 1982 sci-fiThe Thing.

Morricone had previously been nominated five times for the Academy Award; for his scores to Days of Heaven(1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991), and Malèna (2000). However, the 87-year-old composer had received an honorary Oscar for his lifetime contribution in 2007.

Though several decades too late, perhaps, it's fitting at least to see Morricone win for the genre he's most been associated with; having scored Sergio Leone's iconic western trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).

It's a win which will surely bring Tarantino great pleasure as well, with an original Morricone score fulfilling a real ambition within the director's own filmography. Morricone had previously declined scoring Inglorious Basterds (2009), though later agreeing to provide a single, new piece for Django Unchained (2012).