Awards
The score of the original Star Wars film of 1977 won John Williams the most awards of his career:
- an Oscar at the 50th Academy Awards for Original Score
- a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score at the 35th Golden Globe Awards
- a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music at the 32nd British Academy Film Awards in 1978
- Three awards at the 1978 Grammy Awards for Best Instrumental Composition, Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special and Best Pop Instrumental Performance
He also received the 1977 Saturn Award for Best Music for both the Star Wars score and his score for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Williams's score for the 1980 sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, also earned him a number of awards:
- BAFTA Award for Best Film Music at the 34th British Academy Film Awards in 1980
- two awards at the 1981 Grammy Awards for Best Instrumental Composition and Best Album Of Original Score Written For A Motion Picture Or A Television Special
The Empire Strikes Back was also nominated in 1981 for Best Original Score the 53rd Academy Awards (the award was won by Michael Gore for Fame).
Williams's subsequent Star Wars film music was nominated for a number of awards; in 1984 his score for Return of the Jedi was nominated for Best Original Score at the 56th Academy Awards. His compositions for the prequel trilogy also received nominations: the score for The Phantom Menace was nominated for Best Instrumental Composition at the 2000 Grammy Awards and Revenge of the Sith was nominated at the 2006 Grammy Awards for Best Soundtrack Album.
In 2005 the 1977 soundtrack for Star Wars was voted as the "most memorable film score of all time" by the American Film Institute in the list AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores, based on the assessment of a jury of over 500 artists, composers, musicians, critics and historians from the film industry.
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