Biography
John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer and conductor whose career spans over seven decades. He has created some of the most popular and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history. Williams is renowned for his unique style that blends romanticism, impressionism, and atonal music with intricate orchestration. He is best known for his collaborations with directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, earning numerous awards including 26 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 54 Academy Award nominations, he ranks as the second-most nominated individual after Walt Disney and is the oldest Oscar nominee at 91 years old.
Williams's early film compositions include Valley of the Dolls (1967), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Images and The Cowboys (both 1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), and The Towering Inferno (1974). His partnership with Spielberg began with The Sugarland Express (1974), and he has composed music for all but five of Spielberg’s feature films since then. He won five Academy Awards for Best Score for Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Schindler's List (1993). Other notable Spielberg collaborations include Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the Indiana Jones series (1981–2023), Hook (1991), Jurassic Park (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), and The Fabelmans (2022). Williams also composed the scores for Superman (1978), the first two Home Alone films (1990–1992), and the first three Harry Potter films (2001–2004).
In addition to film music, Williams has composed numerous classical concertos and pieces for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. He was the principal conductor of the Boston Pops from 1980 to 1993 and currently serves as its laureate conductor. His other notable works include theme music for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, "The Mission" theme (used by NBC News and Seven News in Australia), and the television series Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, and Amazing Stories.
Williams has received several prestigious honors, including the Kennedy Center Honor in 2004, the National Medal of the Arts in 2009, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998, the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame in 2000, and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2004. His scores have accompanied nine of the top 25 highest-grossing films in the U.S. box office. In 2022, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Williams an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for his contributions to film music. In 2005, the American Film Institute ranked his score for Star Wars as the greatest film score of all time on its AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list; his compositions for Jaws and E.T. also appeared on the list. The Library of Congress added the Star Wars soundtrack to the National Recording Registry, recognizing it as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
150 wins and 226 nominations
