About James Newton Howard
James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American film composer, orchestrator and music producer. He has scored over 100 films and is the recipient of a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, and nine nominations for Academy Awards. His film scores include Pretty Woman (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Space Jam (1996), The Sixth Sense (1999), Dinosaur (2000), Unbreakable (2000), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), Signs (2002), Treasure Planet (2002), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Batman Begins (2005) and its sequel, The Dark Knight (2008) (both composed with Hans Zimmer), Blood Diamond (2006), Michael Clayton (2007), The Hunger Games series (2012–present), the Fantastic Beasts trilogy (2016–2022), and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021). He has collaborated extensively with directors M. Night Shyamalan and Francis Lawrence, having scored eight of Shyamalan's films and eight of Lawrence's films since I Am Legend (2007). He has also worked with other directors such as Peter Jackson, Edward Zwick, Michael Hoffman, P. J. Hogan, Paul Greengrass, Andrew Davis, Lawrence Kasdan, Joe Roth, Martin Campbell, Joe Johnston, Tony Gilroy, Taylor Hackford, Ivan Reitman, Joel Schumacher, and David Yates; conductor Pete Anthony; and violinists Bruce Dukov, and Eun-Mee Ahn. In 1982, Howard was featured on Toto IV as the strings conductor and orchestrator for "I Won't Hold You Back", "Afraid of Love", and "Lovers in the Night". In 1984, Howard composed his first piece of score for a film, receiving a co-writing credit with David Paich for the cue "Trip to Arrakis" in Toto's music for the David Lynch film Dune. He also created five arrangements for the album "Aznavour '83" by Charles Aznavour, which was recorded in California.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.