Another French composer is taking his place in the Hollywood pantheon. Following in the footsteps of his compatriots Georges Delerue (Oscar for A Little Romance in 1980, plus a further four nominations), Michel Legrand (three Oscars: The Thomas Crown Affair in 1969, The Summer of ’42 in 1972 and Yentl in 1984, plus ten nominations) and Maurice Jarre (three Oscars: Lawrence of Arabia in 1963, Doctor Zhivago in 1965 and A Passage to India in 1985, plus six nominations), Alexandre Desplat has just been Oscar-nominated for the third time: The Queen in 2007, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008, and now Fantastic Mr Fox in 2010.

Hollywood seems to have fallen in love with this hyperactive composer who has been responsible for 70 film soundtracks and dozens of themes for TV series. His upcoming work will be heard on the latest Harry Potter, the second Largo Winch, Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe and Terence Malik’s The Tree of Life.

As is often the case with film composers, recognition came first from abroad, with a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for The Beat That My Heart Skipped in 2005, and a Golden Globe for The Painted Veil in 2007. Before that he had missed out on a César award on two occasions: in 1997 for A Self-Made Hero and in 2002 for Read My Lips (both directed by Jacques Audiard).

Some composers, such as Ennio Morricone, end up at the movies a little by chance. Alexandre Desplat, on the other hand, had always thought about composing for films, even if his path towards this goal was somewhat tortuous. He followed a conventional path for a classically-trained musician, learning the piano first, then the trumpet and flute, followed by music theory with Claude Ballif at the Paris Conservatory, tutoring from Ianis Xenakis, and a trip to Los Angeles with Jack Hayes, arranger for Henry Mancini and Leonard Bernstein.

During this time he worked with Ray Lema and Carlinhos Brown, but also wrote Oh mon bateau, a huge one hit wonder for Éric Morena. Thanks to his friend Karl Zéro, Desplat got work in television, composing hours of original music for French cable station Canal +, as well as writing themes for the cartoon series Pif et Hercule.

In the mid-nineties he finally found his feet, notably composing the music for Jacques Audiard’s A Self-Made Man. Alexandre Desplat is one for loyal friendships: his work with Jacques Audiard and Florent-Emilio Siri, for whom Desplat has written music for all his films, is testimony to both this loyalty and to the genuine understanding between true movie buffs.

When he composes for Florent-Emilio Siri, Desplat tends toward the more expressive and eloquent, while with  Jacques Audiard, he seeks a certain purity. His explanation for his success as well as that of his French predecessors in Hollywood: “In France, where cinema tends to be literary, music is of limited importance. So we learn how to be restrained, and to work within constraints.” A magnificent example is Desplat’s work on Read My Lips in 2001, followed by The Beat That My Heart Skipped in 2005, two films by Desplat’s friend Jacques Audiard. On these movies his music insidiously interrupts the silence with an amazing tact and precision that opened the eyes of movie professionals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Desplat is happy to admit that at the beginning, he listened a lot to the masters of film music – the likes of Bernard Herrmann, Georges Delerue and Nino Rota, for instance. Born in 1961, Desplat is part of that generation of professionals who absorbed their culture in the darkness of the movie theatre. It’s where he fell in love with Italian films like those of director Dino Risi, and learned to appreciate those moments where the soundtrack is instrumental in transporting a scene to another dimension, such as when in Fellini’s Amarcord, the characters are dancing in front of the closed hotel in the fog.

Strings are at the heart of Desplat’s style, as is his orchestral conducting. He asks his players to minimise vibrato, to mute their sound and, above all, to be highly attentive to the rhythms he uses for what is perhaps his only tic, his interlacing of short, repeated phrases. He also loves traditional instruments that give some local or historical colour to his scores, including the Japanese shakuhashi, le cymbalom from Central Europe, Tibetan bowls, or the electric cello. Very often he also has his classical orchestra play his beloved jazz as well.

The number of directors who have called on his talents is a long one, including such prestigious names as Ang Lee, Patrice Leconte, Francis Veber, Philippe Harel, Francis Girod and Robert Guédiguian. Desplat belongs to that elite group of composers for whom awards mean a lot less than the work itself.