Spanish film composer Alberto Iglesias gained worldwide recognition through his tense thriller scores and the wide-ranging orchestral work he created for Pedro Almodóvar’s films. He entered the film industry in the early 1980s and formed his initial partnership with Almodóvar on The Flower of My Secret in 1995; three years later his score for the director’s comedy-drama All About My Mother became his first major international success. During the same period Iglesias also wrote several ballets and, alongside composer Javier Navarrete, issued electronic recordings. His suspenseful music for Fernando Meirelles’s 2005 feature The Constant Gardener earned him an Academy Award nomination and captured the music prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Subsequent projects linked him to Marc Forster on 2007’s The Kite Runner, which brought a second Oscar nomination, to Steven Soderbergh for Che in 2008, to Tomas Alfredson on 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, yielding a third Oscar nod, and to Ridley Scott for 2014’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, among other assignments. Three consecutive Almodóvar films—Pain and Glory in 2019, The Human Voice in 2020, and Parallel Mothers in 2021—produced Iglesias’s fourth Academy Award nomination for the last of those pictures, marking his thirteenth collaboration with the director.
Alberto Iglesias Fernández-Berridi was born in San Sebastian in 1955. He began by studying harmony and counterpoint in his hometown before continuing his training in composition and piano in Paris and at the Phonos studios in Barcelona. After completing his formal studies, he teamed with fellow composer Javier Navarrete to form a duo that performed and recorded electronic music between 1981 and 1986; this early interest in inventive and non-traditional methods would shape his later career. Through contacts arranged by his brother Jose Luis, Iglesias entered film scoring in the early 1980s, contributing music to La Conquista de Albania in 1983 and the thriller Adiós Pequeña in 1986. Although respected within the industry, his work remained relatively unknown to wider audiences until he began working with influential Spanish director Julio Medem. The 1991 release of Cows (Vacas) and the 1993 release of The Red Squirrel established a creative alliance that elevated the composer’s profile. Building on the acclaim for those films, Iglesias received numerous assignments throughout the 1990s, among them The Flower of My Secret in 1995—his first project with Pedro Almodóvar—Medem’s Lovers of the Arctic Circle in 1998, and Almodóvar’s All About My Mother in 1999, the latter securing his reputation as an internationally recognized film-music figure.
Iglesias opened the new century with Medem’s Sex and Lucia in 2001 and Almodóvar’s Talk to Her the following year; that same year he also scored the directorial debut of actor John Malkovich, The Dancer Upstairs. His contribution to the 2005 John le Carré adaptation The Constant Gardener brought Academy Award and BAFTA nominations for original score, after which he received the Prix France Musique at the Cannes Film Festival. Another collaboration with Almodóvar followed on 2006’s Volver, and in 2008 Iglesias again earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations, this time for the American production The Kite Runner. He closed the decade with Steven Soderbergh’s Che in 2008 and Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces in 2009.
During the early 2010s his notable credits included Almodóvar’s sci-fi thriller The Skin I Live In in 2011 and a further John le Carré adaptation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which earned him a third Oscar nomination for score. After scoring Almodóvar’s comedy I’m So Excited in 2012, Iglesias returned to the thriller genre with the 2014 Patricia Highsmith adaptation The Two Faces of January; the same year Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings appeared with music by Iglesias. His next Medem film, Ma Ma, arrived fourteen years after their previous project, and in 2016 Almodóvar’s Julieta, drawn from short stories by Alice Munro, reached theaters. Iglesias resumed his long association with Almodóvar on 2019’s Pain and Glory, then scored the director’s 2020 film The Human Voice and 2021’s Parallel Mothers, the last of which brought his fourth Oscar nomination. Also in 2021 he composed the political drama Maixable, his second feature with Spanish director Icíar Bollaín.
