George Fenton obituary

George Fenton adopted his stage name from his time as an actor, in Alan Bennett’s 40 Years On in the 1960s, and for a year in what in the 70s was Emmerdale Farm. Photograph: Shutterstock

Names such as Ennio Morricone or John Williams inevitably spring to mind when the conversation turns to film music composers, but the extraordinary and varied career of George Fenton undoubtedly earns him a place in the first rank of that profession. Fenton, who has died unexpectedly aged 76, made his decisive breakthrough into film music when, collaborating with Ravi Shankar, he created the score for Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film, Gandhi. This brought Fenton the first of his Oscar nominations, shared with Shankar.

He would be Oscar-nominated four more times, twice – for best original score and best original song – for Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), along with Jonas Gwangwa, and for Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King (1991). He would go on to have a long working relationship with Frears, as he did with the directors Ken Loach and Nicholas Hytner, as well as the playwright Alan Bennett.