Michael Kamen

Kamen trained classically at Juilliard and co-founded the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble before transitioning into film scoring, giving him an unusually broad musical background spanning classical, rock and orchestral traditions.

Later the composer behind Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, Kamen gave Brazil's bureaucratic nightmare a score built around the deliriously cheerful title song, deployed with maximum irony. He went on to become one of the most in-demand action-film composers of the following decade.

He later scored The Iron Giant with the same instinct for grounding fantastical material in genuine emotion, and his use of the pre-existing song "Brazil" as an ironic counterpoint to the film's oppressive plot was widely praised as a defining stroke of the score.