Kevin O'Connell is a sound re-recording mixer. He held the record for most Academy Award nominations without a win at 20 until he finally won his first Academy Award for Hacksaw Ridge (2016) at the 89th Academy Awards in 2017. O'Connell was born in Long Island, New York, and raised in Los Angeles, California. At 18, he became a projectionist at 20th Century Fox Studios, where his mother was a secretary for the head of the sound department. Subsequently, failing the trade union examination for the job, he became a Los Angeles County firefighter for a year. At the behest of his concerned mother, alarmed at his gaunt and charred appearance following a brush fire in Sylmar, Los Angeles, he obtained a job as a machine-room operator at Warner Hollywood Studios, also known as Samuel Goldwyn Studios, in 1978, where he worked on films including ...read more