James Horner (born August 14, 1953) is an American composer, orchestrator and conductor of film scores. In a career that spans over three decades, Horner has collaborated with some of Hollywood's heavyweight film directors and producers, including Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Edward Zwick and James Cameron, and has composed many notable scores, including An American Tail, Cocoon, Aliens, Braveheart, Apollo 13, Titanic, The Missing, Avatar, and most recently, The Karate Kid. Born James Roy Horner in Los Angeles, California, Horner learned to play the piano at the age of five. His early years were spent in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music. ...show more

James Horner (born August 14, 1953) is an American composer, orchestrator and conductor of film scores. In a career that spans over three decades, Horner has collaborated with some of Hollywood's heavyweight film directors and producers, including Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Edward Zwick and James Cameron, and has composed many notable scores, including An American Tail, Cocoon, Aliens, Braveheart, Apollo 13, Titanic, The Missing, Avatar, and most recently, The Karate Kid. Born James Roy Horner in Los Angeles, California, Horner learned to play the piano at the age of five. His early years were spent in London, where he attended the Royal College of Music.

He subsequently attended Verde Valley High School in Sedona, Arizona. He received his bachelor's degree in music from the University of Southern California, and eventually earned a master's and started working on his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles where he studied with Paul Chihara, among others. After several scoring assignments with the American Film Institute in the 1970s, he finished his teaching of music theory at UCLA and turned to film scoring. Horner's first score for a feature film was Up From The Depths (1979, a joint effort with composer Russell O'Malley.

Spending the early parts of his career scoring low-budget horror and science fiction films, he eventually formed a working relationship with director and producer Roger Corman, and would go on to compose the score for Corman's Battle Beyond The Stars; parts of this score would be re-used in many Corman productions to come. His first major film score was The Lady in Red (1979), garnering attention from Hollywood. With the score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, established Horner as a mainstream composer. Throughout the 1980s, Horner composed scores for high-profile films such as Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Cocoon and Aliens, the latter garnering Horner's first nomination for an Academy Award; Horner has been nominated nine times since. ...show less