Occupation Re-recording mixer Spouse Heather O'Connell | Years active 1980–present | |
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Nominations BAFTA Award for Best Sound Awards Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing Children Cooper O'Connell, Casey O'Connell Similar Greg P Russell, Rick Kline, Kami Asgar, Lee Orloff, Gregg Landaker | ||
Kevin O'Connell is a sound re-recording mixer. He held the record for most Academy Award nominations without a win at 20, until he won his first Academy Award for Hacksaw Ridge (2016) at the 89th Academy Awards in 2017.
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Early life and career
O'Connell was born in Long Island, New York and raised in Los Angeles, California. At 18, he became a projectionist at 20th Century Fox Studios, where his mother was a secretary for the head of the sound department.
Subsequently failing the trade union examination for the job, he became a Los Angeles County firefighter for a year. At the behest of his concerned mother, alarmed at his gaunt and charred appearance following a brush fire in Sylmar, Los Angeles, he obtained a job as a machine-room operator at Warner Hollywood Studios, also known as Samuel Goldwyn Studios in 1978, where he worked on films including Grease (1978). Becoming a recording technician, he earned his first screen credit on The Empire Strikes Back (1980). His first credit as a sound mixer was on Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982).
Later career
In 1993, O'Connell joined Sony Pictures as a supervising sound mixer, working on films include Armageddon (1998), Spider-Man (2002), and Transformers (2007). In October 2013, he was hired to provide mixing services and take a creative leadership role at Todd Soundelux, working in that company's Todd-AO division in Santa Monica, California. O'Connell returned to Sony Pictures Post Production Services in 2015.
He served a term as the representative of the Sound Branch in the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Academy Award victory
O'Connell holds the record for most Academy Award nominations without a win at 20, having originally set the record in 2006 with his 18th nomination and loss, making him the "unluckiest nominee in the history of the Academy Awards". In 2017, he won his first Academy Award at the 89th Academy Awards for Hacksaw Ridge (2016).
In his acceptance speech at the ceremony, held on February 26, 2017, O'Connell thanked his mother, Skippy, who had urged him into his profession.
Personal life
In 2001, Kevin and Heather O'Connell were married.
Academy Awards
- Terms of Endearment (1983) (lost to The Right Stuff)
- Dune (1984) (lost to Amadeus)
- Silverado (1985) (lost to Out of Africa)
- Top Gun (1986) (lost to Platoon)
- Black Rain (1989) (lost to Glory)
- Days of Thunder (1990) (lost to Dances with Wolves)
- A Few Good Men (1992) (lost to The Last of the Mohicans)
- Crimson Tide (1995) (lost to Apollo 13)
- Twister (1996) (lost to The English Patient)
- The Rock (1996) (lost to The English Patient)
- Con Air (1997) (lost to Titanic)
- The Mask of Zorro (1998) (lost to Saving Private Ryan)
- Armageddon (1998) (lost to Saving Private Ryan)
- The Patriot (2000) (lost to Gladiator)
- Pearl Harbor (2001) (lost to Black Hawk Down)
- Spider-Man (2002) (lost to Chicago)
- Spider-Man 2 (2004) (lost to Ray)
- Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) (lost to King Kong)
- Apocalypto (2006) (lost to Dreamgirls)
- Transformers (2007) (lost to The Bourne Ultimatum)
- Hacksaw Ridge (2016), shared with Peter Grace, Robert Mackenzie, and Andy Wright (won)
Primetime Emmy Award
In 1989, O'Connell, along with James L. Aicholtz, Michael Herbick and Don Johnson, won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or Movie for the television miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989).
Cinema Audio Society Award
- Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures – Live Action – Hacksaw Ridge (2016) (shared with seven colleagues)