Biography for
Thelma Schoonmaker More at IMDb Pro »

Date of Birth

Esposo/a

Trivialidades

Works mainly as editor to Martin Scorsese, who tried to convince her to work for him for years. She was unable to work in Hollywood, however, because she couldn't get into the union. When Scorcese called to ask her to work on Raging Bull (1980), she again demurred because of lack of union membership. However, she believes that Al Pacino got her into the union. To this day, she does not know what influence was used to gain her union membership.

Martin Scorsese introduced her to her husband, Michael Powell.

Her father worked for an oil company, so she was born in Algeria, but grew up in Aruba. She did not live in the United States until her teens.

She met Martin Scorsese during a summer program at New York University, where she was taking an editing course. As she had some professional experience editing movies for late night television, she was brought in to help student director Scorsese with problems on his film.

Honorary doctor of the School of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design in Helsinki, Finland.

After war broke out in her birth country Algeria, she and her family moved to Aruba, where she lived until the age of 15.

Went to Cornell University where she majored in in political science and the Russian language.

Was born in Algeria, because her American parents moved there in 1937.

Describes her marriage to Michael Powell as a "blissfully happy union".

Before getting into editing, she wanted to become a diplomat.

Besides being working partners, she and Martin Scorsese are also personal friends.

Has edited every single film of Martin Scorsese's starting with Raging Bull.

All of her editing credits, except two, for feature films and documentaries have been directed by Martin Scorsese. She has won all three of her Oscars as well for editing Scorsese pictures. The exceptions are the music documentary called Woodstock and feature Grace of My Heart. She worked with Scorsese on both of these he was an editor for Woodstock and producer for the Grace of my Heart.

Her last name 'Schoonmaker' means 'cleaner' (literally clean maker) in Dutch.

Stated on Turner Classic Movies that her name is pronounced "SKoonmaker" (not SHoonmaker).

2007 - Ranked #32 on EW's The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood.

November 2007: Made an honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University.

She was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of her outstanding contribution to film culture.

Personal Quotes

I think the women have a particular ability to work with strong directors. They can collaborate. Maybe there's less of an ego battle.

I'm not a person who believes in the great difference between women and men as editors. But I do think that quality is key. We're very good at organizing and discipline and patience, and patience is 50 per cent of editing. You have to keep banging away at something until you get it to work. I think women are maybe better at that.

People expect artists to be too normal, I think. I've been around enough of them now to see that they're very extraordinary human beings who behave differently than ordinary human beings. If they weren't as sensitive as they are they wouldn't be great artists. They are not the same as us. People should just learn to accept that.

For me, Raging Bull is like my baby. It was my first major feature film. It is pure gold - beautifully directed, incredibly well acted, wonderful sound effects - that being my first break in feature film, making it is like my firstborn.

From MTV on, the speed of editing has increased, and that is now entering into narrative editing. People are not relying on good shots to tell the story, and I don't think you can sustain that kind of cutting for the full length of a film.

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