Hans Zimmer Talks About Oscars and ‘Inception’

Hans Zimmer has composed scores for some of the biggest movies, from “Gladiator” to “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” to “The Dark Knight.” This year, he was nominated for his groundbreaking soundtrack for Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending work “Inception,” for which he received an Oscar nomination — his ninth.

We talked to him about the pros and cons of getting an Oscar nod, creating the iconic blast at the heart of the “Inception” score, and Nolan’s uncanny musical memory.

Yahoo! Movies: You’ve been nominated nine times for an Oscar. Does it lose any of its luster?

Hans Zimmer: The thing to remember about the Oscars is that it’s your peers that vote for you. I don’t know about most people, but my self-esteem goes up and down like a yo-yo. So to have people who you admire actually nominating you is a big deal. And that feels really good. The negative side of it is that I’m most happy when I can just sit in my room and play music and work with other musicians. I’m not the most comfortable getting dressed up and going to big events. And I’m extremely uncomfortable making speeches in front of people. That’s just like the worst thing. It scares the living daylights out of me. The time I won before, I was so nervous I forgot to thank my mother. And that became a whole other story. So whichever way you look at it, you can’t quite really win. There’s a downside to everything.