From “Star Wars” to “Jaws” to “Schindler’s List,” John Williams has written many of the most instantly recognizable scores in cinema history.
The 91-year-old is already the oldest person to receive an Oscar nomination for a competitive award, which he earned thanks to his spare yet poignant compositions for Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.”
With 53 total nods, Williams has more Academy Award nominations than any other living person, and is second only to Walt Disney, who had 59.
And if he gets another statuette on Sunday, which would be his sixth, he will become the oldest person ever to triumph in any competitive category. The record is currently held by screenwriter James Ivory, who was 89 when he won.
It “seems unreal that anybody could be that old and working that long,” Williams recently told NBC News, adding: “It’s very exciting, even after 53 years.”
“I’m very pleased, I think it’s a human thing — the gratification of any kind of appreciation of one’s work.”
Out of the dozens of nominations over the course of his extraordinary career, the composer won Academy Awards for the original “Star Wars,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and three films by Spielberg, with whom he is closely associated — “Jaws,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Schindler’s List.”
He’s even competed against himself multiple times for Oscars glory.
William is known for his grand neo-Romantic scores in the fashion of Wagner, a contrast to the more experimental fare prevalent among many modern composers outside Hollywood.
But his work is also steeped in mid-century influences including jazz and popular American standards.
Williams holds he’s not as Wagnerian as his music might indicate, but admits the 19th century German giant’s influence on Hollywood’s early composers, and therefore his own, is palpable.
“Wagner lives with us here — you can’t escape it,” he told The New Yorker in 2020.
“I have been in the big river swimming with all of them.”
– ‘Single greatest collaboration’ –
Williams was born on February 8, 1932 in New York’s Queens borough to a percussionist father, and was the eldest of four children.
The family moved to Los Angeles in 1948, where Williams later studied composition and took a semester of jazz band at Los Angeles City College.
While in the Air Force, he played both piano and brass while arranging music for the service’s band.
Afterwards, he moved to New York, where he enrolled at the prestigious Juilliard school to study piano.
Though he aspired to be a concert pianist, it became clear to Williams that composition was his true forte.
He moved back to LA, where he worked on orchestrations at film studios — earning plaudits for his range — and as a session pianist, including for the film adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”
Williams notched his first Oscar nod for the 1967 film “Valley of the Dolls,” and won his first in 1972 for “Fiddler on the Roof.”
His momentous partnership with…
