Horner scored six films in 1995, including his commercially successful and critically acclaimed works for Braveheart and Apollo 13, both of which received Academy Award nominations.
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Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, Horner wrote orchestral scores for family films (particularly those produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment), with credits for An American Tail (1986) The Land Before Time (1988) The Rocketeer and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991) Once Upon a Forest and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993) The Pagemaster (1994) Casper, Jumanji and Balto (1995) Mighty Joe Young (1998) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000). "Somewhere Out There," which he co-composed and co-wrote with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil for An American Tail, was also nominated that year for Best Original Song. In 1987, Horner's original score for Aliens brought him his first Academy Award nomination. Cocoon was the first of his many collaborations with director Ron Howard. Horner continued writing high-profile film scores in the 1980s, including 48 Hrs. Director Nicholas Meyer quipped that Horner was hired because the studio could no longer afford the first Trek movie's composer, Jerry Goldsmith but that by the time Meyer returned to the franchise with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the studio could not afford Horner either.
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It established him as an A-list Hollywood composer. Horner's big break came in 1982 when he was asked to score Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. One of his first major scores was for 1979's The Lady in Red. As his work gained notice in Hollywood, Horner was invited to take on larger projects. Horner's first credit as a feature-film composer was for B-movie director and producer Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars. Horner was also an avid pilot and owned several small airplanes. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he finished teaching a course in music theory at UCLA, then turned to film scoring. After earning a master's degree, he started work on his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he studied with Paul Chihara, among others. He returned to America, where he attended Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona, and later received his bachelor's degree in music from the University of Southern California. He spent his early years in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music. Horner started playing piano at the age of five. His brother Christopher is a writer and documentary filmmaker. His mother, Joan Ruth (née Frankel), was born into a prominent Canadian family. He emigrated to the United States in 1935 and worked as a set designer and art director. His father, Harry Horner, was born in Holice, Bohemia, then a part of Austria-Hungary. Horner was born in 1953 in Los Angeles, California, to Jewish immigrant parents. Horner, who was an avid pilot, died at the age of 61 in a single-fatality crash while flying his Short Tucano turboprop aircraft.
He won two Academy Awards, six Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, three Satellite Awards, three Saturn Awards, and was nominated for three BAFTA Awards. Horner collaborated on multiple projects with directors including Don Bluth, James Cameron, Joe Johnston, Walter Hill, Ron Howard, Phil Nibbelink and Simon Wells producers including George Lucas, David Kirschner, Jon Landau, Brian Grazer and Steven Spielberg and songwriters including Will Jennings, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. He also wrote the score for one of the highest-grossing films of all time, Cameron's Avatar. His score for James Cameron's Titanic is the best-selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time. Horner's first major score was in 1979 for The Lady in Red, but he did not establish himself as an eminent film composer until his work on the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He was known for the integration of choral and electronic elements, and for his frequent use of motifs associated with Celtic music. James Roy Horner (Aug– June 22, 2015) was an American composer, conductor, and orchestrator of film scores.