Ennio Morricone

Born in Rome on 10 November 1928, Morricone played trumpet in jazz bands through the 1940s before becoming a studio arranger for RCA Victor and ghost writing for film from 1955 onward. His breakthrough came in the 1960s and '70s composing for Westerns - all of Sergio Leone's work from A Fistful of Dollars on, and Once Upon a Time in the West, which sold an estimated 10 million copies worldwide. Across more than 400 scores for cinema and television, plus over 100 classical works, he collaborated with directors from Giuseppe Tornatore to Quentin Tarantino, earned Academy Award nominations for The Mission, The Untouchables, and others, and finally won Best Original Score for The Hateful Eight in 2015. He received an Honorary Oscar in 2007, and his soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. He died on 6 July 2020, leaving compositions that influenced everyone from Hans Zimmer to Radiohead.