Neil Hillman
English sound designer
Dr. Neil Hillman MIPS, MPSE, ASSG (born 31 January 1960, Sutton Coldfield, England) is a British television and feature film sound designer, re-recording mixer and dialogue editor, notable for his work on the Oscar-winning film Lincoln, New York I Love You and Grace of Monaco. Hillman was awarded the World Medal for Sound Design at the New York Festival for the film The 13th Day in 2010 and in November 2010, he was awarded the Royal Television Society award for Best Production Craft Skills for Sound Design and Mixing on the film Handle With Care.
Early life, education and sport
Hillman was educated at Banners Gate Infants and Junior School, and Riland Bedford High School, in Sutton Coldfield. He was an all-round sportsman who represented his school at rugby, cricket and athletics, and had a long-held ambition to become an apprentice professional footballer through his association as a schoolboy player with local club, Aston Villa. Instead, and to his lasting dismay, parental intervention rejected this choice of career and resulted in him leaving school and joining the Birmingham-based American CNC machine tool manufacturer Cincinnati Milacron as an engineering technician apprentice, at age 16.
He considered this lost opportunity to play professional football to be a deep disappointment for a 16-year old, particularly as several of his long-standing schoolboy teammates went on to enjoy long careers as senior players at Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Everton, Manchester City, Stoke City, QPR and Wolverhampton Wanderers; including youth contemporaries such as Bob Hazell and Wayne Clarke.
He subsequently played non-league football for Sutton Coldfield Town, and as a 17-year old was selected for the West Midlands County side in several English inter-county football matches, playing as a representative of the Cincinnati Milacron factory football team, who competed in the notoriously brutal 'Birmingham and District Works' league. Disillusioned by his non-league footballing prospects, he ceased competitive football by the age of 21, but he has retained a life-long passion for the game. For some years after ceasing playing competitively, he coached junior school youngsters as they started out on their footballing journey.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19874208. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960 and 2010.
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