Anthony Minghella, 54, Film Director
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Anthony Minghella, who died yesterday at 54, was the Oscar-winning film director of “The English Patient;” a protean talent, he was also a playwright, television writer, and opera producer.
He died in a London hospital a few days after undergoing surgery for a growth in his neck.
Tributes poured in from sources as diverse as movie star Jude Law, Prime Minister Blair, and the president of Botswana, where Minghella had recently been filming his last movie, “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”
As a film-maker Minghella was a meticulous craftsman rather than an individual artist. He made only six feature films, latterly separated by three-year intervals, and the last, “Breaking and Entering” (2006), was a conscious scaling down from the Hollywood ethos into which he had been catapulted by the success of “The English Patient.”
Mingella was born at Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, on the south coast of England, on January 6, 1954 to Gloria and Edward Minghella. The family business was the manufacturing of ice cream. Minghella’s breakthrough came with “The English Patient” (1996), which won many prizes, including best picture, best director, and seven other awards at the annual Oscars ceremony. An adaptation of the notoriously difficult novel by Michael Ondaatje, it capitalized on Minghella’s ability with actors and provided outstanding opportunities for Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Juliette Binoche, who was named best supporting actress. The desert location photography revealed a sweep unsuspected in Minghella’s earlier, more modest pictures.
He waited three years before making another film, but in many ways it was even better. “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999) was based on a Patricia Highsmith novel. Minghella’s later films were less impressive. “Cold Mountain” (2003), from a bestseller about the Civil War years by Charles Frazier, failed to match the skills in adaptation Minghella had shown in “The English Patient.” But once again Minghella did his supporting cast proud. Renee Zellweger won an Oscar for her over-the-top Southern accent in the same category as Juliette Binoche had for “The English Patient.”
