Anthony Minghella
For Choice Brits, Anthony Minghella 'introduced' The Heart Of Me
Read Minghella's introduction
Writer, Director and Producer, Anthony Minghella was appointed Chair of the UK’s oldest national film institution, the British Film Institute (responsible for the National Film and Television Archives as well as the world-renowned cinematheque, the National Film Theatre) earlier this year. Known to audiences as a filmmaker who is completely committed to the art of cinema, Anthony’s appointment has been greeted with rapture by the UK industry.
Born in 1954 on the Isle of Wight to Italian parents, Anthony originally lectured in Drama at the University of Hull and wrote for the theatre with stage plays include Child’s Play, Whale Music, A Little Like Drowning, Two Planks And A Passion, Made In Bangkok and Love Bites. Moving to television, his trilogy, What If It's Raining? was highly acclaimed throughout Europe. He began, and regularly contributed to, ITV's award-winning series Inspector Morse. He wrote all nine of the short television films in The Storyteller series for Jim Henson and NBC, which subsequently won awards all over the world including an EMMY, a BAFTA and the Gold Medal at the New York International Film & Television Festival. He also wrote a single film with the same team, Living With Dinosaurs, which won an International Emmy in 1991.
His first film as writer/director, Truly, Madly, Deeply, starring Juliet Stevenson and produced by Robert Cooper (both long-time collaborators) was a great success both in Britain and in America and won him several awards including a BAFTA and a Writers' Guild Award.
The English Patient, which Anthony wrote and directed, opened in London in March 1997. The film, which was based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje, went on to win over thirty awards: 9 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, 2 Golden Globe awards, 6 BAFTA Awards, The Writers' Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay and The Scripters' Award for Best Screenplay. Anthony was also awarded the Director’s Guild of America award for Best Director for The English Patient.
His next feature, The Talented Mr Ripley, which Anthony adapted for the screen and directed, opened in February 2000. The film was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay and for 7 BAFTA Awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. For The Talented Mr Ripley, Anthony won the Best Director Award from America’s National Board of Review and was named by America’s Cinema Owners, ShoWest’s Director of the Year 2000.
In June 2001, Anthony was awarded a CBE, by Queen Elizabeth II.
Since April 2000, in a partnership with Sydney Pollack, Anthony has been joint owner of Mirage Enterprises, the production company behind films such as Sense And Sensibility, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Talented Mr Ripley, Iris, Birthday Girl, Tom Tykwer’s Heaven, Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American and his own film of Cold Mountain which he is currently. Future projects include Assumption Of The Virgin and The Reader.
Anthony Minghella on directing and collaboration:
“Filmmaking is the most strange activity. Particularly if you work as slowly as I do, the preparation of a screenplay and the preparation of the filmmaking is so meticulous and painstaking that the actual process of filming is just barely controlled chaos, and you become entirely hostage to the circumstances of the day. You can't say, ‘I don't want to shoot scene twenty-eight today, I want to shoot it tomorrow’. We have to shoot now because it's the one second where the Grand Canal is clear of contemporary vehicles. We just have to turn over, quick, quick, quick, quick, and so you're grabbing. You suddenly surrender all of the care of preparation for the chaos of shooting. Also you're limited to the qualities of your own eye and you're limited by all of your shortcomings. So what I see is just the sum of my shortcomings when I look at the film!
[Filmmaking] is the work of so many people. And in the end I have to speak for it, but I'm really speaking for the work of a lot of people. One of the jobs I have is to make sure we're all making the same film, and I spend as much time trying to bring everybody's work in concert as I do trying to explore my own contribution.
One of the things that I try to do is to build up a group of people that I work with. And I rely on them to teach me. I've intentionally surrounded myself with people who have a great more experience than I have, who have a whole kind of reservoir of filmmaking that I can dip into. That's very much the reality of me as a film director, as I feel like I'm part of a whole team of people trying to work together and we have to work together in the future as well. There's a group of people that I can invest in who will keep my compass true. There's not one of them who's afraid to tell me very clearly what they think about what I'm doing, and to challenge me and wrestle me all the way through the filmmaking. I need that, and I'm dependent on it.”
Anthony knows the significance of the BAFTAs having been particularly successful in collecting awards and nominations from the British Academy himself.
Anthony Minghella's BAFTA Awards:
2000
Nominated for Best Screenplay - Adapted
The Talented Mr. Ripley
1997
Won Best Film - which he shared with Saul Zaentz
& Best Screenplay – Adapted
The English Patient
and was Nominated for the David Lean Award for Direction also for The English Patient
1992
Won Best Original Screenplay
Truly Madly Deeply
Read Anthony Minghella's introduction to The Heart of Me
