Jonny Greenwood is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, guitarist of the famous indie rock band Radiohead and the most recent The Smile, but also philanthropist and producer of olive oil in the Marche. An irrepressible creativity that branches off and creates endless connections with art, music and cinema. The 98th Academy Awards ceremony, which will be held in Los Angeles at Dolby Theatre on March 15, 2026, sees him as a candidate in the category Best Soundtrack for One Battle after another. And who knows if the third will be the good time..
For Greenwood, in fact, it is the second nomination derived from the long collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson after that for The Hidden Thread, and the third absolute after that for Jane Campion’s Dog Power. Legend has it that the partnership with the American director was born by chance in Rotterdam. Anderson was there for the 2003 Film Festival and, to escape a sudden shower, took refuge in a cinema room where they were projecting Bodysong, a documentary about the human condition directed by Simon Pummell. “It was like I was in trance. A wonderful collection of the two simple things with which a film has to work: images and music” he later told. “I obviously knew Jonny Greenwood’s work with Radiohead, but I fell in love with what he had done for the movie.”.
The artistic lightning strike leads to the creation of the soundtrack for The oil tanker: a bold work that mixes the most experimental material of the Kid A period to the passion for classical music of Greenwood, adding elements of Popcorn Superhet Receiver, a composition previously created for the BBC Concert Orchestra. After the oil tanker, Greenwood was involved in Anderson’s next film The Master, focusing on the relationship between a spiritual guru (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a World War II veteran (Joaquin Phoenix). A bond that improves and cements works after work, continuing with Vizio di forma, The hidden thread, Licorice Pizza and One battle after the other.
Anderson’s last work, free adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, has made a lot of talk about himself for his portrayal of American society, still obtaining 13 nominations for the Oscars 2026. Protagonist is Leonardo DiCaprio as a declining revolutionary who has lived for years on the edge of society along with his daughter (Chase Infiniti), when an old enemy (Sean Penn) resurfaces, threatening the safety of the family.
This last collaboration represents perhaps the apex of an artistic sodalitius that symbolizes the perfect union of music and images. As Anderson himself stated in an interview with Forbes: “Jonny was involved from the beginning, he could read the script long before. He wrote the music so that we could watch the daily, start the music he was writing together with the images and fall into the right atmosphere. By doing so, everyone had that music within themselves and were able to row in the same direction.”.
Jonny Greenwood seems to have found the key to making cinema’s musical training and the long experience gained with Radiohead, a project that sees him fully involved since 1991. As he tells the New Yorker, Greenwood remembers having approached the world of film music for the first time by performing live, with the Oxford youth orchestra, the soundtrack of Assassinio on Richard Rodney Bennet’s Orient Express. “What I love about cinema music is that there is a director with whom to spend months, hopefully, exchange ideas and enthusiasm for various instruments and musical styles.”.
An enthusiasm that led him to collaborate not only with PTA, but also with director Lynne Ramsay for You Were Never Really Here and … and now we talk about Kevin, with the aforementioned Jane Campion for the power of the dog and Pablo Larraín for his film dedicated to Lady Diana, Spencer.
Jonny Greenwood, from that first performance of the soundtrack of Assassinio on the Orient Express to One Battle after the other, tracks a rock figure path that has been able to enrich stories and images with personal sounds without ever overstarting. Now it is up to the Academy to decide whether, in the list of the great successes obtained, the famous golden statuette will be added.
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