The man who made the
overscoring trend seen in the movies since somewhere around
1996 popular. He started out with such mellow works as the soundtracks to
Rain Man,
Driving Miss Daisy and
Thelma and Louise, proving to be a talented
composer of many types of music.
He went on to make the music for Crimson Tide, Broken Arrow and two tracks for The Rock, where he had the privilege of composing music for an already edited movie, in his now well-established style.
He became so popular that some of his works were reused - music from Broken Arrow was used in Scream 2 as well.
After this he once again diversified, leaving the genre he helped create to others (Trevor Rabin and Nick Glennie-Smith), and went on to score The Thin Red Line in classic, orchestral fashion.
After scoring Gladiator, Zimmer stated that he wouldn't do another action movie for a while. But we all know who composed the music for Mission: Impossible 2, don't we?