He was raised in a musical household; his grandfather led an amateur chorale group and his mother sang and played piano at family gatherings.

[3] He began writing stage music during the late 1940s, including for the Théâtre National Populaire, Comédie-Française and the company of Jean-Louis Barrault.

He began collaborating with Boris Vian on a number of projects during this time, including theatrical adaptations of The Snow Knight and The Builders of Empire, an oratorio A Regrettable Incident, and a ballet The Barker.

In 1955 he composed his Concert Symphony for Piano and Orchestra, and on 31 January 1957 his opera The Snow Knight premiered at Nancy and was a popular success.

[3] His career was diverse and he composed frequently for major art house directors, most often François Truffaut (including Jules and Jim), but also for Jean-Luc Godard's film Contempt (Le Mépris), and for Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, and Bernardo Bertolucci, besides later working on several Hollywood productions, including Oliver Stone's Platoon and Salvador.

[citation needed] Delerue also made cameo appearances in La nuit americaine and Les deux anglaises et le continent.

Unhappy with the sinister tone of Clayton's original cut, the studio took control of the film, and held it back from release for over a year.

To Delerue's great disappointment, Disney also insisted on the removal of his original music (which was considered 'too dark'), and replaced it with a new, 'lighter' score by American composer James Horner.

This was issued by Universal France (along with Delerue's music for the 1991 film Regarding Henry) in a limited edition of 3000 CDs, as the inaugural release of its "Ecoutez le Cinema!"

Georges Delerue died on 20 March 1992 from a heart attack in Los Angeles, eight days after his 67th birthday, just after recording the last cue for the soundtrack to Rich in Love.