Biography
Throughout his prolific career, composer/musician/songwriter James Newton Howard has scored films of all scales and genres, earning multiple award nominations for his work. Los Angeles-born Howard began studying music as a small child and went on to attend the Santa Barbara Music Academy and then majored in piano performance at the University of Southern California. After Howard left college, he toured with
Elton John as a keyboardist during the late 1970s and early 1980s before moving into film music in the mid-1980s.
By the 1990s, Howard truly hit his career stride, scoring the surprise blockbuster romantic comedy
Pretty Woman (1990) and receiving his first Oscar nomination for
Barbra Streisand's drama
The Prince of Tides (1991). Setting the musical mood for numerous films throughout the decade, Howard's skills encompassed a plethora of genres, including the Oscar-nominated actioner
The Fugitive (1993), the Western epic
Wyatt Earp (1994), the legal drama
Primal Fear (1996), the blockbuster suspense thriller
The Sixth Sense (1999), and two more
Julia Roberts romantic comedy hits,
My Best Friend's Wedding (1997) and
Runaway Bride (1999).
My Best Friend's Wedding earned Howard his third Oscar nomination for Best Score (his collaborations on tunes for
One Fine Day (1996) and
Junior (1994) garnered Best Song nods). Along with scoring such smaller, character-driven films as
Five Corners (1988),
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and
American Heart (1993), Howard proved equally skilled at composing for big-budget Hollywood spectacles, including
Space Jam (1996),
Dante's Peak (1997), and
Dinosaur (2000). Though he concentrated primarily on films, Howard also contributed music for TV shows, earning an Emmy nomination in 1995 for his theme to NBC's ratings smash
ER. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide