Patrick Doyle is best known, as a film composer, for his collaborations with actor/director Kenneth Branagh. He was born in 1953 near Glasgow, Scotland, and studied piano and singing at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He graduated in 1974, then worked as a piano teacher before writing his first score for the musical comedy Glasvegas for the 1978 Edinburgh Festival. He then went on to a dual career in acting and composition for British television. He composed the music for Scottish Television's Charlie Endell and for the BBC's The Butterfly's Hoof. He also worked as a song writer and performer for the BBC program 60 Minutes, and appeared in a small role in the film Chariots of Fire.

Doyle joined Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company in 1987 as actor, composer and musical director, after he was commissioned to write the music for the television version of their very successful production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. He also wrote the music for other Renaissance productions including Hamlet, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Look Back In Anger, King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1989 he was asked to write the score for Branagh's new film of Shakespeare's Henry V, which began his career in film scoring.

His recent films include A Little Princess (for which he received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Best Score award for 1995); and Sense and Sensibility and Hamlet, which earned him Oscar nominations for Best Dramatic Score.

- From Patrick Doyle: Unofficial Website

Related web sites:
Patrick Doyle: Unofficial Website

Patrick Doyle

Filmography

• Henry V (1989)
• Shipwrecked (1990)
• Dead Again (1991)
• Indochine (1992)
• Into the West
• Carlito's Way (1993)
• Much Ado About Nothing 
• Needful Things
• Exit to Eden (1994)
• Frankenstein
• A Little Princess (1995)
• Sense and Sensibility (1995)
• Une Femme Française 
• Hamlet (1996)
• Mrs. Winterbourne
• Donnie Brasco (1997)
• Great Expectations (1998)
• Quest for Camelot
• Est-ouest (1999) 

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