Today’s date marks the birthdate in 1928 of the Italian composer Ennio Morricone, famous for more than 400 scores he wrote for films and TV.

If you’re a fan, you already know that he wrote the music for a series of “Spaghetti Western” movies like the 1964 classic “A Fistful of Dollars,” starring Clint Eastwood as a taciturn, sun-burnt, cigar-chomping gunman.

If you’re an oboist, you’ve probably played Morricone’s haunting “Gabriel’s Oboe” at weddings or funerals. It's a melody originally heard in his soundtrack to a 1986 film titled “The Mission.”

But in a 2006 interview for DAZED magazine, Morricone revealed some things even his fans might not have known: he collected bars of hotel soap as a hobby. And if he hadn’t become a composer, would have liked to have been a professional chess player.

He also offered a bit of wise advice when asked about scores that were NOT successes: “A long time ago I really loved a film that I was working on and I became too involved. That was kind of unbalanced. It made me realize that you can’t love things too much if you want them to work.”