Anthony Minghella Biography

Oscar winning film director, producer and writer, Anthony Minghella CBE was born in Ryde on the Isle of Wight to master gelatiero Edward Minghella and his wife Gloria. His ancestors are from the Lezio region of central Italy.

He is one of five children. His brother Dominic and sister Edana are both television writers. Minghella is married to Hong Kong born, choreographer, Carolyn Choa; they have a son Max, who is an actor and Hannah, their daughter who works as a production assistant.

At grammar school he gained praise for his part in productions of Admirable Crichton and 1066 and All That. Minghella graduated from the University of Hull in 1975 with a First Class Honours Degree in English Drama; returning there to lecture for seven years whilst studying for his doctorate.

As a post-graduate, back on the Isle of Wight, Minghella shot his first film, about his Italian grandmother. It never saw the light of day and it took him nine years to repay the loan for its budget. Minghella claimed: “It gave me the bug for making films and I realised that making movies was the opportunity to lasso everything that I love doing into one job. It’s a pretty good way to live!”

His outstanding career started off as a humble TV script editor on Grange Hill during the 1980s. He progressed to writing on Inspector Morse, the BAFTA and Emmy award-winning Storyteller series and 1991’s International Emmy Award-winning Living with Dinosaurs.

Straddling genres concurrently, Minghella also leant his pen to theatre. In 1984 he won the London Theatre Critics’ Most Promising Playwright Award for A Little Like Drowning; in 1989 Cigarettes and Chocolate won the Giles Cooper Award and the Sony Award and in 1998 his original play Hang Up won the Prix Italia.

Whilst working on Inspector Morse, Minghella declined an offer to direct because he didn’t want his first directing job to be high-profile – instead, ironically, he opted to make his debut on a film he wrote for the BBC: Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991). It went on cinema release and won several awards including a BAFTA for Best Screen Play.

The English Patient (1996) is another defining project on his CV. Minghella adapted and directed this film from the novel of the same name - it won a staggering nine Oscars including Best Director. Minghella has directed five actors to Oscar nominations: Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, Renee Zellweger, Juliette Binoche and Kristin Scott Thomas.

His direction and adaptation of the novel, The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) was nominated for five Oscars and went on to win eight other awards including a BAFTA for Jude Law’s supporting role.

"I realised that making movies was the opportunity to lasso everything that I love doing into one job."

Since December 2002, Minghella has been the Chairman of the British Film Institute. He also holds three Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Hull, Southampton and Bournemouth and was awarded a CBE in The Queen’s birthday honours list of 2001.

Not one to be pigeon holed, Minghella directed a party election broadcast for the Labour Party in 2005 and in the same year took flight with another debut, staging the Puccini opera Madama Butterfly; which his wife choreographed.

On 18 March 2008, Minghella suffered a fatal haemorrhage in London just days after having surgery for cancer of the tonsils and neck. He was 54.