Biography
-
Born
9 September 1959 (age 64)
-
Born In
Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, Île-de-France, France
Éric Serra (born 9 September 1959 in Saint-Mandé,France) is a French musician and composer. He has often worked on films by Luc Besson.
Éric Serra's father Claude was a famous French songwriter in the 1950s and '60s, and, as such, Éric was exposed to music and its production at a young age. His mother died when he was just seven years old. In the early 1980s, Serra met director Luc Besson and was asked to score his first film, Le Dernier Combat (1983). Serra has scored all of Besson's directed films to date, except Angel-A (2005) (scored by Anja Garbarek), and several that Besson has written, such as Wasabi.
In 1995, Éric Serra was chosen to compose the score to the James Bond film GoldenEye, and produced a much more modern-sounding avant-garde soundtrack compared to previous Bond films. It met with mixed reviews from film critics. Serra's score is often criticized by Bond fans, and is considered the farthest departure from a traditional Bond score. Others found it highly innovative, but with the main objection being the lack of the classic, instantly recognizable Bond leitmotif originally created by Monty Norman and John Barry. The GoldenEye producers later hired John Altman to score the tank chase sequence.
From 1980 to 1988, Éric Serra played bass guitar for French singer Jacques Higelin.
Éric Serra is also a songwriter, notably having written "It's Only Mystery" for the film Subway, "My Lady Blue" for Le Grand Bleu and "Little Light of Love" for The Fifth Element. In 1998, Éric Serra released an album of rock music titled RXRA which resembles the artist's name when pronounced as initial letters in French.
Serra composed the music for the 2008 Las Vegas Criss Angel/Cirque Du Soleil show 'Criss Angel: Believe'.
Serra has spent little time in front of the camera, choosing to work behind the scenes instead. However, on French television he has made a number of appearances performing music, and notably appeared in the Luc Besson film Subway in which he plays 'Enrico the bassist'.
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.