Florian is his middle name. On September 12, 1957, he was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.¹⁾

He grew up in Königstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home but only briefly since he loathed the discipline of regular tuition.As a youngster, he relocated to London and attended Hurtwood House School.²⁾

Zimmer acknowledged his Jewish heritage in a speech at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival, recounting his mother's flight to England in 1939.³⁾

Hans Zimmer began his musical career in the 1970s with the band Krakatoa, where he played keyboards and synthesizers.⁴⁾

He was a member of the Buggles, a new wave band created in 1977 in London by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley. Zimmer appears briefly in the Buggles' 1979 music video for “Video Killed the Radio Star”.⁵⁾

Following his time with the Buggles, he began working with the Italian band Krisma, a new wave band founded in 1976 by Maurizio Acieri and Christina Moser. Krisma's third album, Cathode Mamma, featured him as a featured synthesist.⁶⁾

Zimmer (on keyboards) and Cann (on drums) were both invited to perform with the Spanish ensemble Mecano in Segovia (Spain) in 1984. Two songs from this event were included on the “Mecano: En Concierto” CD, which was only sold in Spain.⁷⁾

In 1980, Zimmer co-produced a single, “History of the World, Part 1,” with and for the Damned, which was also featured on their 1980 LP release, “The Black Album,” and was labeled “Over-Produced by Hans Zimmer”.⁸⁾

In the 1980s, Zimmer collaborated with Stanley Myers, a famous cinema composer who scored over sixty films. Zimmer and Myers co–founded the Lillie Yard recording studio in London. Myers and Zimmer collaborated on blending conventional symphonic sounds with electronic instrumentation.⁹⁾

In 1987, Zimmer composed his debut solo music, Terminal Exposure, for filmmaker Nico Mastorakis, for which he also created the songs.¹⁰⁾

Zimmer's theme song for the television game show Going for Gold, which he co-wrote with Sandy McClelland in 1987, was one of his most enduring compositions from his time in the UK.¹¹⁾

The 1988 picture Rain Man marked a watershed moment in Zimmer's career. When Hollywood filmmaker Barry Levinson was seeking for someone to score Rain Man, his wife heard the soundtrack CD of Zimmer's anti-apartheid drama A World Apart, for which he had created music. Zimmer's work intrigued Levinson, who engaged him to score Rain Man. Rain Man's score was nominated for an Academy Award in 1989, and the film won four Oscars, including Best Picture.¹²⁾

Following the success of Rain Man, Zimmer was commissioned to write the soundtrack for Bruce Beresford's Driving Miss Daisy, which, like Rain Man, won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Zimmer's accompaniment for Driving Miss Daisy was completely made up of synths and samplers. The piano tones heard in the music are from the Roland MKS–20, a rackmount synthesizer, according to an interview with Sound On Sound magazine in 2002. “It didn't sound anything like a piano, but it acted like a piano,” Zimmer quipped.¹³⁾

Zimmer flew to Africa to record the score for the 1992 film The Power of One with African choirs and drums.¹⁴⁾

Based on his previous work, Walt Disney Animation Studios recruited Zimmer to write the soundtrack for the 1994 film The Lion King. This was to be his debut animated picture score.¹⁵⁾