
Age: 75
male
James Newton Howard is an American film composer, orchestrator and music producer. He has scored over 100 films and is the recipient of a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, and nine nominations for Academy Awards. His film scores include Pretty Woman (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Space Jam (1996), The Sixth Sense (1999), Dinosaur (2000), Unbreakable (2000), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), Signs (2002), Treasure Planet (2002), Peter Pan (2003), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Batman Begins (2005) and its sequel, The Dark Knight (2008) (both composed with Hans Zimmer), Blood Diamond (2006), Michael Clayton (2007), The Hunger Games series (2012–present), the Fantastic Beasts trilogy (2016–2022), and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021). He has collaborated extensively with directors M. Night Shyamalan and Francis Lawrence, having scored eight of Shyamalan's films and eight of Lawrence's films since I Am Legend (2007). He has also worked with other directors such as Peter Jackson, Edward Zwick, Michael Hoffman, P. J. Hogan, Paul Greengrass, Andrew Davis, Lawrence Kasdan, Joe Roth, Martin Campbell, Joe Johnston, Tony Gilroy, Taylor Hackford, Ivan Reitman, Joel Schumacher, and David Yates; conductor Pete Anthony; and violinists Bruce Dukov, and Eun-Mee Ahn.

James Newton Howard

Travis Hudson
for Travis Hudson in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Suggested by mr95

In 1845, James Howlett, a boy living in Canada, witnesses his father being killed by groundskeeper Thomas Logan. The anxiety activates the boy's mutation: bone claws protrude from his knuckles and he impales Thomas, who reveals that he is James' birth father before dying. James flees along with Thomas' other son Victor Creed, who is thus James' half-brother and has a healing factor mutation like James. They spend the next century as soldiers, fighting in the American Civil War, both World Wars and the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, the increasingly violent Victor attempts to rape a Vietnamese woman and kills a senior officer who tries to stop him. James happens upon the fight and defends Victor, resulting in the pair being sentenced to execution by firing squad, which they survive due to their mutant healing abilities. Major William Stryker approaches them in military custody and offers them membership in Team X, a group of mutants including Agent Zero, Wade Wilson, John Wraith, Fred Dukes and Chris Bradley. They join the team for a few years, with James now using the alias Logan, but Victor and the group's lack of empathy for human life causes Logan to leave.