The defiantly anti-commercial British musician had walked away from mainstream success twice by his early 20s. Will his Academy Award convince him to embrace Hollywood, celebrity, the big bucks?

Daniel Blumberg hands me his Oscar, as surprised as he is chuffed. Bloody hell, it’s heavy. Is it real gold? “I wish it was,” says the latest winner of best original score, for The Brutalist. (Apparently, it’s gold-plated bronze.) He puts it back on a shabby wooden shelf alongside his Bafta, also for The Brutalist, and his Ivor Novello award, which he won in 2022 for The World to Come, directed by Mona Fastvold (the partner of Brutalist director Brady Corbet). “Before the Ivor Novello, the only thing I’d ever won was ‘most improved footballer’ when I was six,” he says. “Honestly, I’d never thought about Oscars in my entire life. I’d never even watched the ceremony.”

Blumberg, 35, is the least likely Oscar winner you could imagine. Not because he lacks the talent, but because he has spent his career walking away from mainstream success. The former schoolboy indie pop star has reinvented himself as an atonal improviser of scratchy, screechy weirdness. If that sounds like a tough listen, it’s all combined with sublime minimalist melodies to create music as beautiful as it is challenging.