Celebrity Biographies
Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella, director of The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley , passed away on March 18 at the age of 54. The British filmmaker, who won the Oscar for best director for The English Patient , suffered a fatal hemorrhage triggered after an operation, which he underwent to try to stop the tonsil cancer that he had suffered for some time. He was a precious craftsman, distinguished by the careful setting of his work, fidelity to his literary sources, relaxed pace, and a pessimistic outlook on life. His disappearance has caused a huge shock in Great Britain, since since 2003 he was the director of the British Film Institute.
Born on January 6, 1954, on the Isle of Wight (Great Britain), Anthony Minghella was the son of a Scottish woman and an Italian, a bar owner, who came from a family known for its ice cream factory. As a child he developed a great friendship with the projectionist of the local cinema, who ended up letting him enter the screenings for free, which apparently was key to forging his vocation as a filmmaker. After graduating in Literature from the University of Hull, in the north of England, he worked as a university professor for a while. From a very young age, he wrote plays and musicals, and ended up asking for a loan to shoot a film about the life experience of his Italian grandmother, but the project fell through, and it took the young Minghella nine years to repay the bank what he owed. . While, He worked as a theater teacher, until his first production on stage, ‘Whale Music’, became a success, and since then offers have not stopped raining down on him to work as a theater and television director. He spent the 80’s making television episodes of series likeThe Storyteller , created by Jim Henson .
He tried to try his luck in the cinema, first as a screenwriter, for which he prepared adaptations of some of his theatrical texts. Since no director decided to film this material, he decided to take the step of becoming a filmmaker himself. With financing from the private channel Channel 4, he managed to get his first feature film off the ground, the romantic drama Truly Madly Deeply , which was almost exclusively successful in Great Britain. His second work, The English Patient , had a greater impact., adaptation of a successful novel by Michael Ondaatje that won a whopping 9 Oscars, including Best Picture. Minghella himself won it as director, although the one related to the adapted script escaped him, a category in which he had also been nominated. Since then, the British dedicated himself to carefully preparing his projects, since he directed approximately one film every three years. He adapted The Talented Mr. Ripley –based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith- and Cold Mountain –based on a text by Charles Frazier- . By contrast, his last work released in theaters, Breaking and Entering , was based on an original script written by himself. In these three films he gave a prominent role toJude Law , who became his fetish actor.
At the University, Minghella had met the choreographer Carolyn Choa, who ended up becoming the woman of his life. As a result of their marriage, two children were born, Hanna – who worked with her father as a production assistant on The Talent of Mr. Ripley – and Max, an actor who stars in Ágora , the new film by Alejandro Amenábar . And it is that the Minghellas have cinema in their blood, since two of the filmmaker’s brothers, Edana and Dominic, are dedicated to writing scripts. At the time of his death, Minghella leaves the television production The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency pending., pilot episode of a series that is based on the novel by Alexander McCall Smith, about female detectives. The director was unable to finish his episode of New York, I Love You , a collective film along the lines of Paris, je t’aime .