The Queen of the Cutting Room
Best known for her association with the acclaimed director Marin Scorsese, Thelma Colbert Schoonmaker is a French-born American film editor who has won several awards in her illustrious career including three Academy Awards.
Having graduated from Cornell in 1961, Schoonmaker wanted to pursue a career in international diplomacy, however, it was during her time at the Columbia University that Schoonmaker got an offer to work as an assistant film editor and receive on-the-job training. Schoonmaker accepted the offer and thus started her editing career; her first job was to assist the editor to cut frames from the classic European films like Francois Truffaut, Federico Fellini.
She subsequently signed-up for a six-week course in filmmaking at the New York University where she met Martin Scorsese and eventually made her debut in a feature film with Scorsese`s maiden feature film Who`s That Knocking at My Door (1967). Some of her other notable film credits include Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Bombay Velvet (2015), The Snowman (2017) , Silence (2017) and The Irishman (2019).
