Thelma Schoonmaker

Thelma Colbert Schoonmaker (born January 3, 1940) is an American film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese for over forty years. She has edited all of Scorsese's films since Raging Bull (1980), first working with Scorsese on his debut feature film Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967). Schoonmaker has received seven Academy Award nominations for Best Film Editing, and has won three times—for Raging Bull (1980), The Aviator (2004), and The Departed (2006).

Early life

Schoonmaker was born in Algiers, French Algeria, the daughter of American parents, Thelma and Bertram Schoonmaker. Bertram, descended from the New York Schoonmaker family, was employed as an agent of the Standard Oil Company and worked extensively abroad. Thelma was raised in various countries, including on the Dutch-Caribbean island of Aruba.

Schoonmaker did not live in the United States until she was a teenager, in 1955, and was initially alienated and dumbfounded by American culture. Schoonmaker was interested in a career in international diplomacy and began attending Cornell University in 1957, where she studied political science and the Russian language. (She attended classes taught by Vladimir Nabokov.) When she graduated from Cornell in 1961, she began taking State Department tests in order to apply for positions in the U.S. government. Being politically inclined and opinionated, Schoonmaker expressed distaste for the South African policy of apartheid, a stance which did not sit well with those administering the State Department tests. In reaction to this experience, Schoonmaker switched gears and began taking a course in primitive art.