Hollywood composer
Hans Zimmer: I have my Germany in Los Angeles
Film composer Hans Zimmer lives in sunny Los Angeles, but always carries Germany with him. Photo: Britta Pedersen/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer lives in Los Angeles, but says he knows little about the city. His German homeland, on the other hand, is always very close to him.
The German film composer and two-time Oscar winner Hans Zimmer (“The Lion King”, “Dune”) gets little from his adopted home of Los Angeles.
He lives in a studio without a window, “I don’t see LA at all,” he told the “Zeitmagazin”. He spends most of his time composing: “There is no lunch because I forget it. There is no dinner because I forget it, »said the 64-year-old. “It’s my own country I live in.”
Like Thomas Mann: Zimmer carries Germany within itself
With a view to his German origins, Zimmer, who was born in Frankfurt am Main, said: “I have my Germany, like Thomas Mann, in Los Angeles.” He was alluding to a quote from Thomas Mann (1875-1955 / «The Buddenbrooks»), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. In exile in America, he told the New York Times in 1938: “Where I am is Germany. I carry German culture within me.”
Zimmer also has good things to say about his adopted hometown of California. “On January 1st, I was at the pool and I thought to myself: There are many bad things that can be said about Hollywood, but the weather is great. And Hollywood is the last place on earth that commissions classical music every hour. An orchestra is an expensive hobby,” he told the “Zeitmagazin”.
Zimmer received the Oscar this year for the film music in the science fiction epic “Dune”. In 1995 he had already been honored by the US Film Academy for the music for the Disney cartoon “The Lion King”.