People

John Williams

Sound · follow into films and chains

Biography

John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer and conductor. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable, and critically acclaimed film scoresin cinema history. He has a distinct sound that mixes romanticism, impressionism and atonal music with complex orchestration. He is best known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and has received numerous accolades including 26 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. With 54 Academy Award nominations, he is the second-most nominated person, after Walt Disney, and is the oldest Oscar nominee in any category, at 91 years old. Williams's early work as a film composer includes Valley of the Dolls (1967), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Images and The Cowboys (both 1972), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974). He has collaborated with Spielberg since The Sugarland Express (1974), composing music for all but five of his feature films. He received five Academy Awards for Best Score for Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Schindler's List (1993). Other memorable collaborations with Spielberg include Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the Indiana Jones franchise (1981–2023), Hook (1991), Jurassic Park (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), and The Fabelmans (2022). He also scored Superman (1978), the first two Home Alone films (1990–1992), and the first three Harry Potter films (2001–2004). Williams has also composed numerous classical concertos and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. He served as the Boston Pops' principal conductor from 1980 to 1993 and is its laureate conductor. Other works by Williams include theme music for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games; NBC Sunday Night Football; "The Mission" theme (used by NBC News and Seven News in Australia); and the television series Lost in Space, Land of the Giants and Amazing Stories. Among other accolades, he has received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2004, the National Medal of the Arts in 2009 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998, the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame in 2000 and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2004. He has composed the score for nine of the top 25 highest-grossing films at the U.S. box office. In 2022, Williams was appointed an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II, "for services to film music". In 2005, the American Film Institute placed Williams's score to Star Wars first on its list AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores; his scores for Jaws and E.T. also made the list. The Library of Congress entered the Star Wars soundtrack into the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Description above from the Wikipedia article John Williams, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Notable films

Where to start

Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.

Disclosure Day

Original Music Composer

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Original Music Composer

Jurassic World Rebirth

Music

Superman

Music

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Original Music Composer

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Original Music Composer

Schindler's List

Original Music Composer

Star Wars

Original Music Composer

Chains

KinoChain journeys

Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.

Browse all chains

From Transylvania to Treasure Island

Trace Tim Curry's wild ride from cult icon to family favourite, one unforgettable role at a time.

8 films

Loyalty Beyond the Last Breath

From the Alaskan wilds to the trenches of war, a journey through films where the bond between soldier and dog faces the ultimate test.

8 films

When Nature Turns

Exploring the deep to the desert, and the skies to the suburbs, animals have long been cinema's most primal villains. This chain traces the evolution of the cre...

8 films

The Art of the Unresolved

From the sun-bleached streets of Los Angeles to the fog-bound docks of Hamburg, these eight films turn the detective story inside out, leaving questions hanging...

8 films

Wild Hearts: Feral Children and the Call of the Wild

From the forests of 18th-century France to the animated jungles of Mowgli, a journey through cinema's feral children and their quest for belonging.

7 films

The Weight of the Cape: Inheriting a Legacy You Never Asked For

Before the multiverse had a use for her, Kara Zor-El's first outing wasn't framed as destiny, it was framed as a mistake to fix. She loses the Omegahedron, the...

8 films

Pure-Hearted Heroes

Sixty years after Batman '66 taught us that heroism can be bright, sincere, and utterly without irony, this chain celebrates films whose protagonists believe, s...

7 films

The Mind's Eye: Crime Films of Obsession and Interiority

From a detective's haunted pursuit to a killer's fractured psyche, this chain traces cinema's most intimate crime stories, where the real action happens inside...

8 films

Topics