In a cutting room, watching Daniel Craig play his last scene as James Bond come together on the timeline, Elliot Graham found himself in tears. "I remember cutting Daniel's last scene in the movie and I cried when it came together," he told CinemaEditor Magazine, describing the work that closed out No Time to Die and earned him a BAFTA Award. Graham, an Oscar-nominated and BAFTA-winning film editor whose credits spanned more than two decades of American cinema, died on September 19, 2026, in Los Angeles. He was 50.

He was born June 8, 1976, in Claremont, California, to Susan Seymour and Laurence Graham, and grew up making films with friends from Claremont High School, from which he graduated in 1994. He went on to study film at New York University, then worked entry-level production jobs at Miramax and at Merchant Ivory Productions while looking for a way into an editing room, according to a 2006 interview in Post Magazine.

The way in came through persistence. Graham repeatedly reached out to veteran editor Mark Goldblatt, who eventually connected him with director Stephen Norrington. Norrington hired him as first assistant editor on the independent feature The Last Minute in 2001. Money was tight: "I couldn't afford an apartment at the time so I was sleeping on a couch in a room at Lightstorm," Graham told Post Magazine. Within about a month, Norrington promoted him to editor. Graham used the same approach two years later to reach director Bryan Singer, offering to work under Singer's regular editor, John Ottman, on X2: X-Men United: "I know you have John Ottman, but I would be willing to go back and assist," he said. Singer and Ottman brought him on, and Graham was soon promoted to co-editor.

The partnership continued on Superman Returns in 2006. "John and I split the material during production, he takes scenes I take scenes," Graham explained of their workflow, crediting Singer's habit of wanting "to hear what every single person has to say." Around the same period he also cut The Greatest Game Ever Played and, in 2008, the drama 21.

That same year, Graham edited Gus Van Sant's Milk, weaving archival 1970s news and home-video footage into Sean Penn's portrayal of gay rights leader Harvey Milk without letting the film tip into documentary territory. The work earned Graham an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing at the 81st Academy Awards, according to Yahoo Entertainment. Milk producer Dan Jinks later said the film "wouldn't have come together in the way it did without the amazing work of our editor Elliot Graham," calling him "this sweet, kind and quirky man," in a tribute reported by TheWrap after Graham's death.

Graham kept alternating between intimate drama and studio scale. He reunited with Van Sant on Restless in 2011, cut Stephen Daldry's Trash and served as additional editor on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014, then took on Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs and additional editing on Beasts of No Nation in 2015. Steve Jobs, shot in three long acts out of chronological order in production but assembled in sequence, gave him room to vary his rhythm scene by scene: "there's a lot of energy, almost frenetic, to the camera movements in Act One... it was shot on 16mm, so it gives it this cinema verite feel," he told The Credits, while "Act Two has a more classical technique to it, so the cutting becomes a little slower in pacing."

He edited Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut Molly's Game in 2017, then served as producer and editor on Danny Boyle's FX limited series Trust in 2018, dramatizing the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III. On Captain Marvel in 2019, Graham split duties with co-editor Debbie Berman in an approach she described as "dividing and conquering," with Graham handling much of the film's action while Berman focused on its emotional core, according to Frame.io.

His final credited film was No Time to Die in 2021, Daniel Craig's last outing as Bond. Graham and co-editor Tom Cross worked from separate cutting rooms down the hall from each other at Pinewood Studios, picking up whichever new footage arrived as it came in, and both traveled to Matera, Italy to work alongside director Cary Fukunaga; Graham also went to Scotland for second unit material. "Elliot is a fantastic editor, I've been a fan of his work for years," Cross said of their collaboration, according to The Credits. The film brought Graham and Cross the BAFTA Award for Best Editing at the 75th British Academy Film Awards in March 2022. Graham was a member of the American Cinema Editors, the profession's honorary society.

None of Graham's work carried his face or his name past the credits, but it shaped how millions of people experienced two decades of American film: the sweat and uncertainty of an election night in Milk, the shifting rhythm of three acts in Steve Jobs, the propulsion of a Marvel set piece, and the quiet, final frames of a spy who finally ran out of road. Those choices remain cut into the films exactly as he left them.