The Times obituary

Anthony Minghella, the film-maker who led Britain’s most spectacular raid on the Oscars, died yesterday from complications after surgery to remove a growth on his tonsil. He was 54. Having sprung to national attention with Truly Madly Deeply in 1991 he stormed Hollywood with his nine-Oscar winning epic The English Patient six years later. As chairman of the BFI from 2003 until this year he was also effectively the face of the British film industry.

The lump had appeared in the past month and Minghella had appeared to be making a routine recovery after the operation in Charing Cross Hospital last Tuesday, his agent said. But on Monday he suffered a haemorrhage — a risk with any throat surgery — and he died with his wife Carolyn at his bedside at about 5am yesterday.

On the greatest night of his professional life Minghella pondered his circuitous route to the top of the film industry and paid tribute to his roots. He became the first and only Oscar winner in history to proclaim his victory “a triumph for the Isle of Wight”.

His breakthrough film Truly Madly Deeply tweaked the emotional cords of audiences on both sides of the Atlantic and set Minghella on the road to stardom. His finest hour was at the Academy Awards in 1997 when his ravishing widescreen rendering of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient swept the board, picking up nine Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture.

The last film he completed is another literary adaptation set in Africa but one with a very different flavour. The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, co-scripted with Richard Curtis from Alexander McCall Smith’s book about the “traditionally built” Botswanan sleuth Precious Ramotswe, will be shown on BBC One on Sunday night. He had been due to oversee a spin-off series of 13 one-hour episodes based on the detective agency characters. Two further film projects, New York, I Love You and The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, which he had both written and planned to direct, are still in production.

Friends first realised that something was wrong when Minghella failed to attend a private screening of his latest film at the BFI last Friday.

It was an evening that should have brought together the two sides of his professional life: the film-maker responsible for The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and the champion of British film who as chairman of the BFI did so much to drive the conversion of the old National Film Theatre into a state-of-the-art film centre, completed a year ago.

Amanda Nevill, the BFI director, said: “He was legendary for not taking holidays — if his legs were falling off he would still turn up at things. But nobody envisaged anything like this. We are all devastated.”

Leslee Dart, Minghella’s New York-based agent, said that she had spoken to him last week and he was his normal self — “optimistic, full of humour and grace”.From the Prime Minister down, friends and admirers paid tribute to Minghella’s legacy. Gordon Brown, whom he directed in an election broadcast with Tony Blair in 2005, said: “He was one of Britain’s greatest creative talents, one of our finest screenwriters and directors, a great champion of the British film industry and an expert on literature and opera.

Jude Law, who became Minghella’s signature actor (The Talented Mr Ripley, Cold Mountain and Breaking and Entering) said that he was “deeply shocked”. Law said: “He made work feel like fun. He was a sweet, warm, bright and funny man who was interested in everything from football to opera, films, music, literature, people and most of all his family, whom he adored and to whom I send my thoughts and love. I shall miss him hugely.”

At the premiere of the The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency at the BFI last night Richard Curtis paid tribute: “Anthony was always trying to search for a truth he believed in, rather just entertain.”

Mr Minghella’s brother Dominic added: “He knew he probably wasn’t going to be able to come tonight but it’s absolutely right that we are here to celebrate what he leaves us, which is an incredible body of work and passion. I salute my fantastic brother.”

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