He has worked with Robert Altman, Jean-Luc Godard and Joan Chen; won an Academy Award for The English Patient; and has had a major part in two films opening in Hong Kong today. However, chances are that most local film-goers have never heard of Gabriel Yared.
Which is pretty rough for someone who has written the scores for more than 70 films since 1980 and is one of the most established figures of his craft today.
Yared (right) has been nominated three times for the best original score Oscar during the past decade (the other two were The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain). Anthony Minghella, who directed all three films, has said that he 'learned a lot from him' rather than vice versa.
Not that Yared puts much stock in fame. 'One day you're the star, and a year later you're nobody,' says the 57-year-old from his London office, which is next door to the Abbey Road studios. 'I don't think I oriented my life towards those things. I'm not 'in the business'. I'm just a composer who brings beauty which could elevate audiences.'
Beirut-born Yared is a self-taught musician whose eclectic influences include Transylvanian and Appalachian folk music, as well as 1950s jazz.
Yared and Minghella have reunited on Breaking and Entering, a film that explores the fragility of relationships in London's increasingly impersonalised landscape. 'Anthony wanted the score to be more urban,' says Yared. 'I lived a lot of my time in London, but I'm not aware what the urban feel could be like.'