Biography for
Basil Poledouris More at IMDb Pro »

Date of Birth

21 August 1945, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Date of Death

8 November 2006, Los Angeles, California, USA (cancer)

Birth Name

Basilis Konstantine Poledouris

Mini Biography

Basil Poledouris was born on August 21, 1945 in Kansas City. He started taking piano lessons when he was 7 years old. Eventually he went on to become a student at USC, where he studied the arts of directing, cinematography, editing, sound and of course music. It was also at USC he met John Milius and Randal Kleiser, both acclaimed directors with whom he would work in the future. Even though Basil had already composed music to John Milius' much talked about Big Wednesday (1978), his real breakthrough came in 1982 when he composed the score to Milius' epic fantasy movie, Conan the Barbarian (1982). The powerful themes that Basil created for this movie opened the eyes of the movie industry, as well as the public, and it is arguably one of the best soundtracks of the 80s. Basil went on to make soundtracks for such movies as: RoboCop (1987) (the second Paul Verhoeven movie of many for which he has composed, the first being 1985's "Flesh + Blood"), "Lonesome Dove" (1989) (for which he won an Emmy), Farewell to the King (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Free Willy (1993), in Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (1997) with Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards and Misérables, Les (1998).

IMDb Mini Biography By: Henrik R.

Spouse

Bobbie Poledouris

(1969 - ?) (divorced) 2 children

Trade Mark

Worked frequently with John Milius, with whom he frequently went surfing while they were both USC film students. Their most famous collaboration was Conan the Barbarian (1982); others include Red Dawn (1984), Farewell to the King (1989) and Flight of the Intruder (1991).

Trivia

He was of Greek descent.

Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Music Branch).

At USC, he took classes in film score composition taught by legendary film composer Miklós Rózsa.

He composed music for over 100 educational films before getting his break in feature films.

Browse biographies section by name

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z