Film Composers, Ranked

With 5 Oscars and 54 Academy Award nominations, he is the most-nominated living person, and his themes for Star Wars, Jaws, and E.T. are among the most recognizable melodies ever written.

He scored more than 400 films and reinvented the Western with whistles, twangs and wordless vocals; he finally won a competitive Oscar for The Hateful Eight in 2016 after an honorary one in 2007.

His Remote Control studio reshaped the sound of the modern blockbuster, and he won Oscars for The Lion King (1995) and Dune (2022).

His shrieking strings in Psycho are cinema's most famous cue, and his collaborations with Hitchcock set the template for the psychological thriller score.

A restlessly inventive craftsman nominated for 18 Oscars, he won for The Omen (1976) and moved fluidly from avant-garde atonality to sweeping Star Trek fanfares.

His leitmotif-driven score for the Rings trilogy is one of the largest ever composed for film and won three Academy Awards.

His mournful Godfather theme is inseparable from the film, and his decades of work with Fellini produced some of Italian cinema's most beloved music.

His Titanic score and song 'My Heart Will Go On' won him two Oscars and made the soundtrack the best-selling primarily orchestral album in history.

His gothic, waltzing scores define Tim Burton's world, and his Simpsons theme has aired for over three decades.

A prolific French composer with a delicate, precise touch, he won Oscars for both The Grand Budapest Hotel (2015) and The Shape of Water (2018).

His shimmering, minimalist textures became the sound of prestige drama; despite 15 Oscar nominations he has never won.

He won an Oscar for Up, whose opening 'Married Life' montage is a masterclass in wordless storytelling, and scored Pixar hits and the Lost TV series.

His synth-driven Chariots of Fire theme won an Oscar and topped the charts, and his Blade Runner score defined the sound of cinematic sci-fi.

A rising force who won Oscars for Black Panther (2019) and Oppenheimer (2024), plus a Grammy and Emmy for The Mandalorian.

Her cello-led Joker score made her the first solo woman to win the Best Original Score Oscar (2020), and she won an Emmy and Grammy for Chernobyl.

With Atticus Ross, the Nine Inch Nails frontman brought abrasive electronic textures to film and won Oscars for The Social Network (2011) and Soul (2021).

A capable Remote Control alumnus, but his blockbuster scores are frequently criticized as interchangeable walls of bombast rather than memorable themes.

Enormously prolific and technically competent, yet his action scores are the frequent poster child for the 'forgettable, temp-track blockbuster music' critique, with few themes anyone can hum afterward.