It was in the 1980's that Zimmer met and began working with the film composer Stanley Myers. Realizing the importance of incorporating the electronic and classical musical forms, they set up "Lillie Yard Studio" in London with the very latest state of the art musical technology. Zimmer continued to work out of "Lille Yard Studio" as his partnership with Myers strengthened. They worked very successfully on Jerzy Skolimovshi's Moonlighting, Success is the Best Revenge and The Lightship, Nicholas Roeg's Insignificance, and The Castaway. They then went on the compose the music for the box office hit My Beautiful Launderette. In 1986, he worked solo on Working Title's Vardo and he then went on to partner with Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne to produce the soundtrack for the award winning epic The Last Emperor.

In 1988 he was asked to compose the music for a small budget, ground breaking film about South Africa, A World Apart. Based on a true story, this film was not just a coming of age for the voice of the struggle, but a turning point in Zimmer's career. As a result, he was asked to write the Oscar nominated score for the box office smash Rain Man, which in turn led to work on Ridley Scott's Black Rain, another Best Picture recipient, Driving Miss Daisy, and Ron Howard's fireman epic, Backdraft. Zimmer himself won an Oscar for The Lion King in 1994, leading to a successful career scoring subsequent animated pictures. The next year, the submarine thriller Crimson Tide proved a huge success at the box office and Zimmer received high praise for his choral, action-packed score, including a Grammy win. Similar styles carried over into 1997's The Peacemaker, 2000's Gladiator, and the Pirates of the Caribbean scores and eventually came to definite his career "sound."

First through a film music factory called "Media Ventures" (with Jay Rifkin) and later "Remote Control," Zimmer transitioned in the 2000's into more of a producer than a typical film composer. In addition to his composing work, Zimmer headed DreamWorks' film music division. His appointment marked the first time that a composer had headed the music department of a major studio since the days of Dimitri Tiomkin at MGM and Alfred Newman at Twentieth Century Fox. So large is Zimmer's influence on audiences and potential buyers of film music albums that some record labels put Zimmer's name first and foremost on score albums for which he only played a minor coordinating role. Many of his major soundtracks are released in a variety of packaging ploys with different musical contents to enhance its marketability.

Zimmer is reluctant to perform his work in public and does not conduct his own scores. Almost always collaborating rather than working alone, Zimmer has created scores with some of the industry's leading composers, including James Newton Howard, John Powell, and Harry Gregson-Williams, and has brought artists from outside the industry, led by Tom Holkenborg (Junkie XL), into regular film scoring assignments. For better or for worse, Zimmer has revolutionized the way film and television music is produced, allowing an opportunity for dozens of younger composers to emerge successfully from his organization while at the same time contributing to a trend towards recycled and generic blockbuster music he started in the 1990's.

Hans Zimmer poses at his studio in 1995

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