Simon Hayes (sound engineer)

Simon Hayes is a British production sound mixer. He won the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing and the BAFTA Award for Best Sound for his work on Les Misérables. He earned two further nominations in those categories for his work on No Time to Die and Wicked.

Career

After starting work as a runner for a commercial production company when he was 16 years old, Hayes moved into the sound department as an assistant and then boom operator, before mixing his first feature film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels at the age of 27. Hayes was the production sound mixer for the 2012 epic period musical film Les Misérables, for which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him the Oscar for Best Sound Mixing at the 85th Academy Awards, alongside Andy Nelson and Mark Paterson. The director Tom Hooper required all singing in the film to be recorded live, which was widely deemed to be impracticable. Hayes and his team undertook complex recording, editing and mixing processes to achieve Hooper's aim. They captured recordings of the actors amidst loud film sets, edited the vocals, then overdubbed the orchestration.

Hayes is a 4th degree Brazilian jiu-jitsu blackbelt and coaches at Carlson Gracie London. He also holds a 2nd dan blackbelt in Judo. Hayes raced BMX in the 1980s, winning the 1985 European BMX Championships in Barcelona.