Alexandre Desplat

“Alexandre has the awareness, intelligence, and the ability to know when he needs to propel his voice or whisper. He is one of the greatest composers in the history of the genre.”
(Guillermo del Toro)

Alexandre Desplat, a true cinephile, has developed his own style through a unique approach which creates a special tone and identity for each movie score. Revered for his extraordinary career as a composer of film music, he has created original scores for over 130 films and received numerous awards, including two Academy Awards, three BAFTAs, three Cesar Awards, two Golden Globes, two GRAMMY awards and numerous other nominations and distinctions. Desplat has collaborated with directors such as Wes Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow, George Clooney, David Fincher, Stephen Frears, Greta Gerwig, Terence Malick, Roman Polanski and Guillermo del Toro.

After scoring 50 European films with legendary French directors including Philippe de Broca, Francis Girod and Jacques Audiard, Alexandre Desplat burst onto the Hollywood scene with his evocative score for Girl with a Pearl Earring in 2003. And over the last two decades, he’s become one of the most prolific film composers in the industry, having created the enticing sound worlds for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and The Shape of Water, among countless other blockbusters.

A close collaborator of Wes Anderson, Desplat’s delightfully mischievous scores for Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The French Dispatch continuously spark joy and delight among music and movie lovers worldwide.

His writing is enriched by a classical background and a diverse cultural heritage — born to a Greek mother and a French father who studied in California. This unique blend not only enables him to compose epic symphonic scores but also to skilfully incorporate elements of world music and jazz instrumentation into his soundtracks, as showcased in films like Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and the above mentioned cult classic The Grand Budapest Hotel.

As a conductor of his own works in concert, Desplat has worked regularly with orchestras including London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Basel Symphony Orchestra and Wiener Symphoniker and in prestigious venues such as Barbican, Wiener Musikverein and Paris Philharmonie among others.

He has composed new works for Lang Lang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Emmanuel Pahud, the latter performing his Pelléas et Mélisande, Symphonie concertante for flute and orchestra (which was also later released on Warner Classics with Orchestre National de France). In 2020, his first opera En silence was premiered in Luxembourg, Paris and Japan, with a libretto and staging by director-musician and long-term artistic partner, Solrey. In 2021, Desplat collaborated with the choreographer Alan Lucian Øyen for a new work The American Moth commissioned by The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., The National Theater and Concert Hall, Taipei, the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, Oslo, and premiered at Bergen International Festival. His most recent staged work, another collaboration with Øyen, was premiered by Norwegian National Ballet at Norwegian Opera in 2023.

Following two sold out concerts with the Orchestre de Paris, at the Philharmonie de Paris in January 2025, and a thrilling collaboration in July 2025 with LA Philharmonic at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, Desplat will add an exciting series of performances with the world’s leading orchestras and cultural organisations, to be announced in the 2025/2026 season and beyond.

In association with Polyarts

Le cinéma d'Alexandre Desplat - Girl with a Pearl Earring © Arte Concert

Alexandre Desplat conducts "The Secret Life of Pets" in Vienna © ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna

A composer gives the film a soul, its own voice. Alexandre has the awareness, intelligence, and the ability to know when he needs to propel his voice or whisper. He is one of the greatest composers in the history of the genre.

Guillermo del Toro

Desplat is a genius, he really is. He came in with this beautiful piece of music and he orchestrated the hell out of it and he said – I think this will make it work, and he did. And I am telling you, when we finished, I looked over at him and I was like, this is exactly, more than I could have hoped for.

George Clooney

A sweeping composition that must rate as one of the best new scores for dance theatre in many a year.

Bachtrack, October 2023

With a resume as long as his, there are so many beautiful scores that have moved audiences to tears, created fantastic and magical worlds, and allowed the boundary between the audience and the story to disappear.

Collider, March, 2023

The rest of the score overflows with that quintessential whimsical Desplat sound – the orchestrations are often light, dainty, and effortlessly pretty, and the recording is so crisp and precise that you can pick out even the tiniest little texture.

Jonathan Broxton

What makes Alexandre Desplat’s art so strong and at the same time so elusive, is his ability to meddle with any genre and any sensibility.

Score it Magazine, February 2019

Over the course of his career, Desplat has honed one of the most distinctive voices in modern film music, a precise, controlled, highly classical style that veers between the austere and the deeply impassioned.

Sean Wilson, 2013