Smith was born in
Harefield, Middlesex in England. He was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Film Editing for
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2004) and
The Dark Knight (2008). He was also nominated for the
BAFTA Award for Best Editing for
The Dark Knight and for
Inception (2010). He was nominated for the
BAFTA Award for Best Sound for
The Piano (1993). He began his career as a sound editor/sound designer for films such as
Dead Calm (1989),
The Piano (1993) (for which he was nominated for the
BAFTA Award for Best Sound), The Portrait of a Lady (1996) and
Holy Smoke! (1999). Smith was also editing films during this interval; he was one of the editors for
RoboCop 2 (1990). He began his
notable collaboration with director
Peter Weir on the 1982 film
The Year of Living Dangerously, on which he was an associate editor working with Weir's longtime editor
William M. Anderson. He was credited as a co-editor with Anderson for
Fearless (1993) and for
The Truman Show (1998). He was the sole editor for Weir's
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), for which Smith was nominated for the
Academy Award for Film Editing and for an "Eddie Award" from the
American Cinema Editors. More recently, Smith has edited seven films with director
Christopher Nolan. He was nominated for a second
Academy Award and
American Cinema Editors Award for
The Dark Knight (2008). In 2010, he received another nomination for the
American Cinema Editors Award for his editing work on
Inception;
Inception was listed as the 35th best-edited film of all time in a 2012 survey of members of the
Motion Picture Editors Guild. In 2018, he received an Academy Award for his work on Nolan's
Dunkirk. == Filmography ==