Alex Heffes is a British film composer (born 2 September 1971 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire).His film scores include those for the BAFTA-winning Touching the Void, and Oscar-winning movies One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland, and Inside Job. Heffes was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for his work on Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. 　　Heffes was born in the UK and learned the piano from an early age. He graduated from Oxford University with first class honours and started his professional life playing keyboards and writing and arranging for commercials and TV (his band is featured playing in jazz club scenes in the film Circus). This led to him becoming assistant to composer Simon Boswell with whom he scored over 20 movies including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Cousin Bette. He also collaborated on Elton John's score to Women Talking Dirty and worked with members of Blur. 　　In 1999, after a chance meeting with Kevin Macdonald he wrote the score to the Oscar winning documentary One Day in September. This led to a long collaboration with Macdonald, on films such as Touching the Void, State of Play and The Last King of Scotland. During the production of Last King of Scotland he travelled to Uganda to produce the songs and score in the movie.[5] He has worked with many notable directors including Stephen Frears (The Program), Mira Nair (Queen of Katwe) Justin Chadwick (The First Grader, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) Peter Webber (Emperor) and Catherine Hardwick (Red Riding Hood). He contributed additional arrangements to Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. 　　In 2011 he released his first solo album "Face To Face". The album was created by improvising on location in a series of one on one collaborations with artists such as Regina Spektor, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tunde Jegede. The tracks with Matthew Barley were recorded in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. 　　He has been nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and won an Ivor Novello Award in 2012 for The First Grader. 　　He always conducts his own orchestral scores and frequently plays piano on his scores.