# Carter Burwell

Carter Benedict Burwell (born November 18, 1954) is an American film composer. He has frequently collaborated with the Coen brothers, having scored most of their films. He has also scored films by other directors such as Bill Condon, Todd Haynes, Spike Jonze, Martin McDonagh, James Foley, Brian Helgeland, and John Lee Hancock. Burwell received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Haynes's Carol (2015) and McDonagh's films Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022).

## Early life and education

Burwell was born in New York City, the son of Natalie (née Benedict), a math teacher, and Charles Burwell, who founded Thaibok Fabrics, Ltd. He graduated from King School in Stamford, Connecticut with George Hofecker and other notables and Harvard College, where he was a cartoonist for The Harvard Lampoon.

## Career

As a film composer, Burwell has had a long-working relationship with the Coen brothers, providing music for every film they have made (except for Inside Llewyn Davis and O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Among his best known film scores are Miller's Crossing (1990), And the Band Played On (1993), Conspiracy Theory (1997), Hamlet (2000), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), In Bruges (2008), Twilight (2008), Where the Wild Things Are (2009), The Blind Side (2009), and Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011) and Part 2 (2012). Burwell wrote and recorded the original score for the film The Bourne Identity, but director Doug Liman wanted something else and replaced it with a score by John Powell.
The ethos of the punk rock movement gave Burwell the impetus to start performing. He performed in New York with several bands, notably The Same, Thick Pigeon, and Radiante. Burwell played in Thick Pigeon with Stanton Miranda; the group released two albums, Too Crazy Cowboys (Factory) and tracks on Miranda Dali (Crepuscule), originally released as a Miranda solo project but later reissued as a Thick Pigeon release. On Burwell's soundtrack for Psycho III, Miranda was a featured singer.
By 1986 he had composed the music for a dance piece, RAB, which premiered at the Avignon Festival. At the same time, he was touring worldwide with The Harmonic Choir, David Hykes' experimental vocal group, which specialized in overtone singing.
Burwell used the country music genre as the basis for his score for the Coens' Raising Arizona in 1987. From 1982 to 1987 he worked at the New York Institute of Technology.
His work has alternated between live performance, dance and theater commissions, and film scoring. His chamber opera, The Celestial Alphabet Event, was presented in New York in 1991, and other theater pieces include Mother (1994) and Lucia's Chapters (2007), both with the experimental theater group Mabou Mines.
In April 2005, Burwell composed and conducted music performed by The Parabola Ensemble for the plays Sawbones, written and directed by the Coen brothers, Hope Leaves the Theater, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, and Anomalisa, written and directed by Kaufman as Francis Fregoli. This was a segment of the sound-only production "Theater of the New Ear", which debuted at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, with support from Sirius Satellite Radio. It was also performed at the Royal Festival Hall in London, England, in May 2005, and at Royce Hall in Los Angeles, California, in September 2005, as part of the UCLA Live Festival.
In 2009, Burwell was the recipient of the ASCAP Henry Mancini Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. In 2010, he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for Where the Wild Things Are.
In 2015, he received the Distinguished Film Composer award from the Middleburg Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for Best Music Score for Anomalisa and Carol. He was nominated for the Annie Award for Music in an Animated Feature Production for Anomalisa and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for Carol. In 2016, he received the Satellite Award for Best Original Score and the Best Score award by the International Cinephile Society for Carol. Burwell was awarded Film Composer of the Year by the World Soundtrack Awards, and the score for Carol received the Public Choice Award for the Best Score of the Year.
Burwell received his first Academy Award for Best Original Score nomination for Carol, his second for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and his third for The Banshees Of Inisherin .

## Personal life

Burwell married Christine Sciulli in 1999.
Since 2009, Burwell has lived in Napeague, New York.

## Filmography
### Films

| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1984 | Blood Simple | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 1985 | A Hero of Our Time | Michael Almereyda | Short film |
| 1985 | R.A.B.L. | Patrice M. Regnier | Short film |
| 1986 | Psycho III | Anthony Perkins | |
| 1987 | Raising Arizona | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 1987 | Pass the Ammo | David Beaird | |
| 1987 | The Beat | Paul Mones | |
| 1988 | It Takes Two | David Beaird | |
| 1988 | Checking Out | David Leland | |
| 1990 | Miller's Crossing | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 1991 | Barton Fink | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 1991 | Doc Hollywood | Michael Caton-Jones | |
| 1991 | Scorchers | David Beaird | |
| 1992 | Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Fran Rubel Kuzui | |
| 1992 | Waterland | Stephen Gyllenhaal | |
| 1992 | Storyville | Mark Frost | |
| 1993 | This Boy's Life | Michael Caton-Jones | |
| 1993 | Kalifornia | Dominic Sena | |
| 1993 | A Dangerous Woman | Stephen Gyllenhaal | |
| 1993 | Wayne's World 2 | Stephen Surjik | |
| 1994 | The Hudsucker Proxy | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 1994 | It Could Happen to You | Andrew Bergman | |
| 1994 | Airheads | Michael Lehmann | Replaced David Newman |
| 1995 | Bad Company | Damian Harris | |
| 1995 | A Goofy Movie | Kevin Lima | |
| 1995 | Rob Roy | Michael Caton-Jones | |
| 1995 | The Celluloid Closet | Rob Epstein Jeffrey Friedman | Documentary film |
| 1995 | Two Bits | James Foley | |
| 1996 | Fargo | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 1996 | Fear | James Foley | |
| 1996 | Joe's Apartment | John Payson | |
| 1996 | The Chamber | James Foley | |
| 1997 | Picture Perfect | Glenn Gordon Caron | |
| 1997 | Assassin(s) | Mathieu Kassovitz | |
| 1997 | Conspiracy Theory | Richard Donner | |
| 1997 | The Locusts | John Patrick Kelley | |
| 1997 | The Spanish Prisoner | David Mamet | |
| 1997 | Girls Night Out | Myra Paci | Short film |
| 1997 | The Jackal | Michael Caton-Jones | |
| 1998 | Gods and Monsters | Bill Condon | |
| 1998 | Mercury Rising | Harold Becker | Composed with John Barry |
| 1998 | The Big Lebowski | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 1998 | Velvet Goldmine | Todd Haynes | |
| 1998 | The Hi-Lo Country | Stephen Frears | |
| 1999 | The Corruptor | James Foley | |
| 1999 | The General's Daughter | Simon West | |
| 1999 | Being John Malkovich | Spike Jonze | |
| 1999 | Three Kings | David O. Russell | |
| 1999 | Mystery, Alaska | Jay Roach | |
| 2000 | Hamlet | Michael Almereyda | |
| 2000 | What Planet Are You From? | Mike Nichols | |
| 2000 | O Brother, Where Art Thou? | Joel and Ethan Coen | Additional music only |
| 2000 | Before Night Falls | Julian Schnabel | |
| 2000 | Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 | Joe Berlinger | |
| 2001 | A Knight's Tale | Brian Helgeland | |
| 2001 | The Man Who Wasn't There | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 2002 | The Rookie | John Lee Hancock | |
| 2002 | Searching for Paradise | Myra Paci | |
| 2002 | Simone | Andrew Niccol | |
| 2002 | Adaptation | Spike Jonze | |
| 2003 | Intolerable Cruelty | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 2004 | The Ladykillers | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 2004 | The Alamo | John Lee Hancock | |
| 2004 | Kinsey | Bill Condon | |
| 2006 | Fur | Steven Shainberg | |
| 2006 | The Hoax | Lasse Hallström | |
| 2007 | No Country for Old Men | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 2007 | Before the Devil Knows You're Dead | Sidney Lumet | |
| 2008 | In Bruges | Martin McDonagh | |
| 2008 | Burn After Reading | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 2008 | Twilight | Catherine Hardwicke | |
| 2009 | A Serious Man | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 2009 | Where the Wild Things Are | Spike Jonze | |
| 2009 | The Blind Side | John Lee Hancock | |
| 2010 | Howl | Rob Epstein Jeffrey Friedman | |
| 2010 | The Kids Are All Right | Lisa Cholodenko | |
| 2010 | True Grit | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 2011 | Midnight Run | Neil Shelley | Short film |
| 2011 | The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 | Bill Condon | |
| 2012 | Seven Psychopaths | Martin McDonagh | |
| 2012 | The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 | Bill Condon | |
| 2013 | The Fifth Estate | Bill Condon | |
| 2015 | Mr. Holmes | Bill Condon | |
| 2015 | Carol | Todd Haynes | |
| 2015 | The Family Fang | Jason Bateman | |
| 2015 | Legend | Brian Helgeland | |
| 2015 | Anomalisa | Charlie Kaufman Duke Johnson | |
| 2016 | The Finest Hours | Craig Gillespie | |
| 2016 | Hail, Caesar! | Joel and Ethan Coen | |
| 2016 | The Founder | John Lee Hancock | |
| 2017 | Wonderstruck | Todd Haynes | |
| 2017 | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri | Martin McDonagh | |
| 2017 | Goodbye Christopher Robin | Simon Curtis |
| 2018 | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs | Joel and Ethan Coen |
| 2019 | Missing Link | Chris Butler |
| 2019 | The Good Liar | Bill Condon | |
| 2021 | The Tragedy of Macbeth | Joel Coen | |
| 2022 | Catherine Called Birdy | Lena Dunham | |
| 2022 | The Banshees of Inisherin | Martin McDonagh | |
| 2023 | To Catch a Killer | Damián Szifron | |
| 2024 | Drive-Away Dolls | Ethan Coen | |
| 2025 | Good Fortune | Aziz Ansari | |

### Television

| Year | Title | Network | Notes |
| 1990–1991 | Clash! | Ha! / Comedy Central | Main title theme |
| 1993 | And the Band Played On | HBO | Television film |
| 2011 | Mildred Pierce | HBO | Miniseries; 5 episodes |
| 2011 | Enlightened | HBO | Episode: “Pilot” |
| 2014 | Olive Kitteridge | HBO | Miniseries; 4 episodes |
| 2019–present | The Morning Show | Apple TV+ | Series |
| 2020 | Space Force | Netflix | Season 1 only |

## Accolades

| Year | Association | Category | Project | Result |
| 2001 | BAFTA Award | Best Original Music | The Man Who Wasn't There | Nominated |
| 2009 | Golden Globe Award | Best Original Score | Where the Wild Things Are | Nominated |
| 2011 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Original Dramatic Score): Part Five | Mildred Pierce | Won |
| 2011 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music | Mildred Pierce | Nominated |
| 2015 | Academy Award | Best Original Score | Carol | Nominated |
| 2015 | Golden Globe Award | Best Original Score | Carol | Nominated |
| 2017 | Academy Award | Best Original Score | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri | Nominated |
| 2017 | Golden Globe Award | Best Original Score | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri | Nominated |
| 2022 | Academy Award | Best Original Score | The Banshees of Inisherin | Nominated |
| 2022 | BAFTA Award | Best Original Music | The Banshees of Inisherin | Nominated |
| 2022 | Golden Globe Award | Best Original Score | The Banshees of Inisherin | Nominated |