Harry Gregson-Williams is one of Hollywood's most sought after composers, whose scores span the spectrum of high-profile projects from action to drama to animation – each infused with the emotional punch and atmospheric intensity that mark his distinctive musical style. He was the composer on all four installments of the blockbuster Shrek franchise; garnered a BAFTA nomination for the score for the first Shrek; and received Golden Globe and Grammy Award nominations for his score to Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.
His more recent scores include Miss You Already for director Catherine Hardwicke, Blackhat for Michael Mann, Monkey Kingdom for Disney Nature, The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington, Total Recall starring Colin Farrell and Kate Beckinsale, music for Ridley Scott's Prometheus, the Aardman animated film Arthur Christmas, the action thriller Cowboys & Aliens directed by Jon Favreau as well as the unique documentary Life in a Day.
His long list of film credits also includes the critically acclaimed The Town, marking his second collaboration with director Ben Affleck. Gregson-Williams first worked with Affleck as the composer on Gone Baby Gone. He has worked multiple times with other directors, including Joel Schumacher on the films Twelve, The Number 23, Veronica Guerin and Phone Booth; and Tony Scott on Unstoppable, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Déjà Vu, Domino, Man on Fire, Spy Game and Enemy of the State. Gregson-Williams' prolific output has also seen him scoring Mike Newell's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; X-Men Origins: Wolverine; Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Mr. Pip; Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven; Beeban Kidron's Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason; Aardman's animated smash Chicken Run; Return to Sender and Smilla's Sense of Snow, both for director Bille August; Antoine Fuqua's The Replacement Killers; and the first computer generated animation from DreamWorks, Antz.
Gregson-Williams has scored three of the five games in the highly successful Metal Gear Solid franchise for Konami and Call of Duty for Activision, which became the top selling video game of 2014 and for which he received various music gaming awards.
Born in England to a musical family, Gregson-Williams earned a music scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge at the age of 7 and subsequently gained a coveted spot at London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama from which he received an Honorary Fellowship. Gregson-Williams then turned his attention to teaching, initially in schools in England but later in Alexandria, Egypt.
He started his film career as assistant to composer Richard Harvey and later as orchestrator and arranger for Stanley Myers, and then went on to compose his first scores for director Nicolas Roeg. His subsequent collaboration and friendship with composer Hans Zimmer resulted in Gregson-Williams providing music for such films as The Rock, Armageddon and The Prince of Egypt and helped launch his career in Hollywood. He has also been a regular and valued mentor at the Sundance Composers Lab, working directly with talented emerging composers from all over the world.
Twentieth Century Fox
