Anthony Minghella

Anthony Minghella CBE (January 6, 1954 — March 18, 2008[1]) was an Academy Award-winning English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007.

Minghella was born on the Isle of Wight at Ryde, the son of Gloria and Edward Minghella, ice cream factory owners.[2] His father was Italian/Scottish and his mother came from Leeds; her ancestors originally came from Valvori, a small village in the Lazio region of central Italy. Minghella attended Sandown Grammar School and St John's College (Portsmouth). He was a graduate of the University of Hull, where he completed undergraduate and postgraduate courses, but eventually abandoned his doctoral thesis.

His first piece of produced work was a 1975 stage adaptation of Gabriel Josipovici's Mobius the Stripper; however, it was his 1985 piece Whale Music that kickstarted his career.[3] He made his directorial debut with a double bill of Samuel Beckett's Play and Happy Days. During the 1980s, he worked in television, starting as a runner on Magpie before moving into script editing the children's drama series Grange Hill for the BBC and later writing The Storyteller series for Jim Henson. He also wrote several episodes of the ITV detective drama Inspector Morse. His 1986 play Made in Bangkok found mainstream success in the West End.