23/02/2015 - The multi-award-winning French composer has won the Oscar for Best Original Score for The Grand Budapest Hotel

Alexandre Desplat with his Oscar for The Grand Budapest Hotel

It took a total of eight nominations before French composer Alexandre Desplat finally won the Oscar for Best Original Score, the only major prize that had been lacking in his incredibly well-filled trophy cabinet. Now it is finally a reality, thanks to the British-German-US co-production The Grand Budapest Hotel [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile]. Alexandre Desplat had been nominated for the Oscar in 2007 (for The Queen [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andy Harries
interview: Stephen Frears
film profile]), 2009 (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), 2010 (Fantastic Mr Fox), 2011 (The King’s Speech [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tom Hooper
film profile]), 2013 (Argo) and 2014 (Philomena [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stephen Frears
film profile]). This time around, he had doubled his chances, as he was also nominated for The Imitation Game [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile].

This Oscar can therefore be added to the myriad awards won by the French composer, who was born in Paris on 23 August 1961 and who kicked off his feature-film career in 1985 (with Ki lo sa?): a Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 2005 for The Beat That My Heart Skipped [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a Golden Globe in 2007 for The Painted Veil (and six other nominations since 2004), César Awards in 2006 (The Beat That My Heart Skipped), 2011 (The Ghost Writer [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and 2013 (Rust & Bone [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jacques Audiard
interview: Jacques Audiard
film profile]), European Film Awards in 2007 and 2010, BAFTAs in 2011 and 2015, and so on. In total, Desplat has won almost 60 international awards and has become so famous that he was chosen as chair of the competition jury at the Venice Film Festival in 2014 and led the Music Lesson master class at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Desplat, whose filmography now includes over 150 titles, will soon continue his career on the big screen, with such movies as The Tale of Tales by Italy’s Matteo Garrone, Suffragette [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile] by British director Sarah Gavron and Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad by Robert Guédiguian (read the article).

(Translated from French)