By the time he was hired to score Batman Forever, Elliot Goldenthal was already established as one of the leading film composers of his generation. A native of New York, Goldenthal was born in 1954. Although he enjoyed the music of jazz greats as a young man and formed a blues band that toured the country, Goldenthal decided to become a classical composer. His conservative education includes a Masters degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied composition with John Corigliano and Aaron Copland.

Goldenthal brings an engaging intellect to his work, a quality that does not, however, come at the expense of emotion. At times his work exudes a macabre humor. His first major Hollywood films were Mary Lambert's Pet Semetary (1989) and Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy (1989). On the strength of his work for Pet Semetary, producer Tim Zinnemann recommended that Goldenthal be hired to score David Fincher's Alien 3 (1992). His modernist, complex score announced the arrival of a challenging and gifted new voice.

In other accomplishments, the composer incorporated jazz and Asian music in his score for John Madden's Golden Gate (1993), created "composition as collision" in Ron Shelton's Cobb (1994), and charted the chronological development of western instruments in Neil Jordan's Interview With the Vampire (1994) (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination). Some of his other film credits include Marco Brambilla's Demolition Man (1993), Michael Mann's Heat (1996) and Joel Schumacher's A Time To Kill (1996). He recently received another Oscar nomination for his outstanding musical score for the Neil Jordan biopic Michael Collins (1996).

One of the more active composers to work in both film and the concert hall arena, Goldenthal's classical credits include Shadow Play Scherzo (a piece commissioned to honor Leonard Bernstein's 70th birthday), Pastime Variations for chamber orchestra, the song cycle Los Heraldo Negros (with Cezar Vallejo), Sonata for String Bass, Concerto for Trumpet and Piano, two brass quintets, the Obie award-winning oratorio Juan Darien, and Fire Water Paper, a multi-language oratorio written to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

Goldenthal has a background in theatre and has written incidental music for Shakespeare productions (Titus Andronicus, 1994) as wells as two musicals (The Transposed Heads and Liberty's Taken), two theatrical works (Juanderie, The Green Bird) and an opera (Grendel).

Goldenthal is currently set to return to Gotham City for Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin (1997).