People

Thomas Newman

Sound · follow into films and chains

Biography

Thomas Montgomery Newman (born October 20, 1955) is an American composer, conductor, and orchestrator. He is best known for his film scores, earning accolades of six Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, two BAFTA Film Awards, and 15 Academy Award nominations. In a career that has spanned over four decades, he has scored numerous films including The Player (1992), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Little Women (1994), Meet Joe Black(1998), American Beauty and The Green Mile (both 1999), Pay It Forward (2000), In the Bedroom (2001), Road to Perdition and White Oleander (both 2002), Finding Nemo (2003) and its sequel Finding Dory (2016), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Cinderella Man (2005), WALL-E (2008), the James Bond films Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), Bridge of Spies (2015), 1917 (2019), and Elemental (2023). In television, Newman has composed music for the HBO drama series Six Feet Under (2001), the 2003 miniseries Angels in America, and the Netflix biographical crime drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024). In the latter, he co-composed with his daughter Julia Newman. He has collaborated with directors such as Robert Altman, Jon Avnet, Martin Brest, Frank Darabont, Todd Field, John Lee Hancock, John Madden, Sam Mendes, Andrew Stanton, and Steven Soderbergh. Description above from the Wikipedia article Thomas Newman, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Notable films

Where to start

Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.

The Shawshank Redemption

Original Music Composer

WALL·E

Original Music Composer

The Green Mile

Original Music Composer

Finding Nemo

Original Music Composer

American Beauty

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Fried Green Tomatoes

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Little Children

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

Original Music Composer

Chains

KinoChain journeys

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

Browse all chains

The Cracks in the Picket Fence: Suburban Critique Across Generations

From the manicured lawns of 1999 to the glowing screens of today, this chain traces how cinema has dissected the suburban dream, revealing the isolation, confor...

8 films

Hope Is a Good Thing

From the walls of Shawshank to the rooftops of Tehran, a chain of films about friendship, resilience, and the stubborn persistence of hope.

8 films

A Feast for the Wandering Eye

From Tokyo ramen bars to Mumbai tiffin carriers, eight films that use food to map the distances between people and the places they call home.

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

Signals in the Ash

From a father's vigil to a robot's devotion, eight films trace the fragile threads that hold humanity together when the world falls quiet.

8 films

Topics