Actor / Director Profile

Simon Boswell was born in London, UK on October 15th, 1956. He is a film composer with more than 90 films to his credit.At seventeen Simon went to Pembroke College in Cambridge to study English Literature. Already an accomplished guitarist, and whilst still at college, he was signed by Transatlantic Records in 1975. This resulted in his first solo album, 'The Mind Parasites', a collection of contemporary acoustic songs and instrumentals.In 1977, at the beginning of punk rock, he formed the band "Advertising". Labelled 'Power Pop' the band was more of an homage to the pop art style of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground. They toured extensively with Blondie. Following the demise of Advertising, Simon became a record producer both in the UK and Italy. His production of Italian mega star Renato Zero is to this day the biggest selling Italian album of all time. His record productions from the 1980s have influenced many contemporary musicians - notably the sample of the band 23 Skidoo's 'Coup' which became The Chemical Brothers' 'Block Rockin' Beats'.Recent years have seen him collaborate with many high profile artists for his film projects: Elton John, Dolly Parton and Marianne Faithful, and work with musicians from bands including Blur, Orbital, The Sex Pistols and Echo And The Bunnymen.Twice BAFTA nominated, and with countless awards from around the world, his prolific film career stretches back to 1985 and his roots in Italian horror with Dario Argento.Since then he has worked with many of the world's most ambitious directors including Danny Boyle, Michael Hoffman, Clive Barker and Alejandro Jodorowsky and spanned every conceivable genre, from his early work on Italian exploitation movies (Phenomena, Stage Fright) to contemporary thrillers (Shallow Grave, Hackers), horror flicks (Lord of Illusions, Hardware), romances and character studies (Jack & Sarah, This Year's Love, Born Romantic), dramas (In My Father's Den, The War Zone, My Zinc Bed), fantasies (Santa Sangre, Photographing Fairies, "Tin Man" (2007)) and literary classics (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cousin Bette).Boswell brings to each new project an energy and distinctiveness that stems from his unconventional background and his own admission that he lives in a 'musical vacuum'. No stranger to live performance as well as the recording studio, he is just as accomplished with electronic and rock music as epic orchestral scores, often combining the two.His rare forays into TV have often managed to shock: "The Lakes" (1997) (BAFTA nominated), "Pornography: The Musical" and "Songbirds" - both collaborations with film-maker Brian Hill and poet Simon Armitage.In Autumn 2006, after 12 years in the making, Simon's album 'Close Your Eyes' was released independently via his own Flick Records. 'I cut up my previous scores into bits and re-assembled them as new songs mixing full orchestra with musicians from Blur and The Kills and spoken word parts for some of the actors and directors I have worked with along the way - including Ewan McGregor, Ray Winstone, Goran Visnij, Dario Argento and Alejandro Jodorowsky.Simon continues to work on his own unique art project called "Blink!" - an audio-visual installation of portraits extracted from news footage, looped to last forever, and individually scored with their own soundtracks. This was first exhibited at the ICA in London in 2002 on 4 simultaneous cinema-sized screens.Simon's first project with the Vatican, Santo Subito, is a film in collaboration with the Vatican setting the speeches, and for the first time, the singing of Pope John Paul II to Simon's music and visuals.