I’m going to be honest – I didn’t even realise the legendary composer Hans Zimmer was behind The Lion King’s famous soundtrack until I heard him talk about it on Classic FM. 

Not only did he work on the 1994 classic, but he actually won an Academy Award for Best Original Score (alongside two Grammies and a Golden Globe) for his contribution. 

Still, he shared on Classic FM that he had been reluctant to take the role at first. 

“I didn’t want to do Lion King, you know, cartoons – why am I doing cartoons?” he recalled. 

Until 1994, the composer’s work had appeared in live-action classics like Thelma & Louise, Rain Man, A World Apart and Driving Miss Daisy.

“And, oh my God, they might turn [the songs] into musicals. I don’t really like musicals,” the film legend said he thought at the time. 

However, Zimmer changed his mind because his daughter, who was six at the time, had never been able to go with him to the premiere of any of the movies he’d worked on, because “all the movies with Ridley Scott are not necessarily child-friendly”.

So he agreed to make the film – but when he sat down to write, more family matters came up for Zimmer.

“My dad died when I was six years old, and here I am sitting in front of this cartoon, and it’s about the death of a father – with fart jokes, admittedly,” he revealed.

“And I realise... it’s a complete lie that children get over this stuff. They don’t get over it, they just find out really clever ways of hiding this stuff.” 

The composer shared he couldn’t “hide” his feelings anymore, and “I basically wrote a requiem for my dad, and it became a really serious piece.” 

That made it “deeper than your normal cartoon,” both for him and The Lion King’s viewers.

Zimmer has since been credited in mutliple other Disney titles (including Pirates Of The Caribbean, and, perhaps even more surprisingly still, Muppet Treasure Island).