Zimmer was, however, happy to discuss some of the more intimate aspects of working with so many stellar writers and directors. “Deadlines are a good thing,” he said, though he would not divulge what his next project is. Speaking from his Viennese Renaissance-style Santa Monica recording studio, Zimmer said he was just coming out of a meeting. Zimmer’s work has also brought him to some of the world’s top artistic landmarks - he got exclusive middle-of-the-night access to the Louvre in Paris for “The Da Vinci Code” and got the same treatment for Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture in Florence, Italy. “I get to travel so much for these movies - sooner or later I’ll get there.”

“Instead, they are all turning up for dinner at my house, pretty much,” Zimmer said, laughing. In fact, Zimmer said one reason he was excited to accept AFIPO’s award was that he had hoped the event might be held in Israel, which would have given him an excuse to travel to the country his mother used to visit every year. Nowadays, he openly calls the Jews “my people.” Today, living in Los Angeles with his wife and four children, Zimmer said he is thrilled to help the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in any way he can and hopes one day to travel to Israel to work on a film score (he doesn’t take vacations). “There was always still that cloud, and I felt it.”

“Quite honestly, I think my parents were always wary of me telling the neighbors,” Zimmer said. He knows she escaped Germany in 1939 and survived the war in England, but her silence about the family religion led him to feel that it was, in a way, their secret. Zimmer’s father died when he was a young boy, and his mother rarely discussed her Jewish roots. Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s in post-World War II Germany only made his identity harder for him to grapple with. Zimmer has certainly come a long way since his days living in Frankfurt and London, when he felt ambivalent, even uncomfortable, about being Jewish. Zubin Mehta will conduct, as members of the orchestra perform some of Zimmer’s most memorable works. On July 16, the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (AFIPO) will honor Zimmer with a lifetime achievement award at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. He won an Oscar in 1995 for best musical score for “The Lion King,” and his music can be heard in such classics as “The Prince of Egypt,” “Gladiator,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Inception,” “The Dark Knight” and this year’s best picture-winner, “12 Years a Slave.” Regarded as one of the world’s most accomplished film composers, Zimmer, 56, has written music for more than 100 movies and has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, nine Grammys and 11 Golden Globes. “I think that was the only time she said, ‘I’m very proud of you,’ ” Zimmer joked. “I couldn’t wait for this press conference to finish, and I got to the phone, and I phoned her in Munich.”įilled with anxiety and guilt, Zimmer relayed to his mother what he had done, then listened as she paused for a moment, and then told him, “I’m very proud of you.”

“As soon as I said it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve outed my mother,’ ” Zimmer recalled in a recent phone interview. When Hans Zimmer stepped up to the podium during a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival in 1999 to discuss his score of “The Last Days,” a Holocaust documentary produced by the Shoah Foundation, he was asked why he chose to work on the movie.Īnd that’s when Zimmer revealed a family secret on German national television: The Zimmers are Jewish.

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