Horner was born on August 14th 1953 in Los Angeles, California and studied under Gyorgi Ligeti at the Royal College of Music in London. After receiving his doctorate from UCLA, he wrote an avant-garde concert piece called ‘Spectral Shimmers’, but soon became disillusioned with the world of musical academia. He moved into feature films in the late 1970s and early 1980s, scoring American Film Institute projects and movies for the notorious producer Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. His first big job was to be asked to score the second Star Trek movie, ‘The Wrath of Khan’, in 1982 and since then he has never looked back. His incredible rise to fame has never been equalled in Hollywood composing circles, and his contributions to the film world have included some of the best and most memorable scores of recent years, including ‘Krull’, ‘Brainstorm’, ‘Cocoon’, ‘Aliens’, ‘Willow’, ‘Glory’, ‘Field of Dreams’, ‘Legends of the Fall’, ‘Braveheart’ and ‘Apollo 13’. His most recent score, for James Cameron’s epic ‘Titanic’ was honoured with a Golden Globe, something he has never won before, although he did win a Grammy Award in 1986 for the Linda Ronstadt/James Ingram ballad ‘Somewhere Out There’, which he wrote for the film ‘An American Tail’. Horner’s future projects include the swashbuckler ‘The Mark of Zorro’ starring Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins, the comedy ‘Mighty Joe Young’ and the action thriller ‘Deep Impact’ for director Mimi Leder. James Horner is married, to Sarah, has two daughters and lives in Malibu Canyon, California.