Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer has said the trauma of his father’s death “came pouring out” when he was creating the score for The Lion King.
“I didn’t really want to do a cartoon. I mean, I was doing Ridley Scott movies and, you know, proper movies,” the music producer told the BBC.
“But my daughter, Zoe, was six years old, and I’m a dad, and dads like to show off a little, so I’m writing away at it, because the story was never quite finished.
“I’m writing away at it, and suddenly the father dies, and my father died when I was six years old, and so I tucked all that away, you know, you don’t get over it.
“You know, they say, oh the child – get over it, over the trauma. We don’t get over the trauma, we just get really good at hiding it because we don’t want to be embarrassed by it somehow.
“Suddenly, you know, all that stuff came sort of pouring out, and really it’s a love for my dad – I didn’t decide … automatically I wrote a requiem for my father.”
Zimmer, 67, has written the score to numerous films, many of which are captured in a live performance that features in the new film Zimmer And Friends: Diamond In The Desert.
Zimmer also told the BBC he had two weeks of piano lessons as a child and said “actually it wasn’t piano lessons, it was somewhat nuclear war between him (his piano teacher) and me”.
This was “because he wanted me to play other people’s music, and I, as a six-year-old, was firmly under the impression that this whole game was about him teaching me how to get the stuff that’s in my head into my fingers”.
In 1995, Zimmer won the Academy Award for best original score for The Lion King and he won the same Oscar for Dune in 2022.
His new film includes conversations with Billie Eilish, Sir Christopher Nolan, Dune director Denis Villeneuve, Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya.
It plays in select global cinemas from Wednesday.
