Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning director and screenwriter of The English Patient and other acclaimed films, died on 18 March, 2008, aged 54, following complications after surgery.

He wrote, produced and directed the 1996 film which won a total of nine awards at the following year’s Academy Awards, including Best Director.

Among his other films, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Cold Mountain (2003) also received prestigious nominations and awards, while his first feature, Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) was a surprise, BAFTA-winning hit.

Anthony Minghella was born on the Isle of Wight on 6 January, 1954, to parents of Italian descent. During his youth he dreamed of being a pop star and played keyboards in two bands.

He studied and then lectured on drama at Hull University but abandoned his thesis on his hero, Samuel Beckett, to concentrate on a play he was writing. He borrowed a camera to shoot a backdrop for an outdoor scene and subsequently decided to make a film instead.

During the 1980s he worked within the sphere of children’s television for ITV and BBC, starting as a runner and then working his way up to script editor on Grange Hill. By the end of the decade he was writing episodes of Inspector Morse and Jim Henson’s The Storyteller.

He made his directorial debut in 1990 with Truly, Madly, Deeply, a television film starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman, which is often described as a British version of Ghost (released the same year) for their shared lover-returns-from-the-dead motif. When the BBC saw it, they decided it would be worth more as a cinematic release and their decision was vindicated when Mr Minghella received the BAFTA for ‘Best Original Screenplay’.

Truly, Madly, Deeply attracted international attention too and Mr Minghella was hired to direct Matt Dillon in the comedy, Mr. Wonderful (1993), an exception to his directorial work in that he didn’t write the script. It was also an exception due to the lukewarm reception it received.

After this he began work on adapting Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The English Patient. The Sahara Desert drama, which featured the talents of Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas, was nominated for a total of 12 Oscars. It also scooped six BAFTAs and two Golden Globes and was the foundation of Mr Minghella’s reputation as a director who was able to produce films equally successful at box offices, award ceremonies and in critics’ columns.

His next two films, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain, were great examples of this. They also showed his adaptability, being a European comic romp and a bloody Civil War film respectively, and he received awards for his direction and writing for both.

In 2006, he directed Jude Law for a third time in his first original screenplay since Truly, Madly, Deeply – Breaking and Entering both celebrated and questioned diversity and relationships in modern London and was nominated for three British Independent Film Awards.

With such a strong track record it was no wonder Mr Minghella’s last few years were the busiest of his career, with filming recently completed on a collaboration with Richard Curtis to adapt Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling novel The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and two other projects scheduled for 2008.

Between 2003 and 2007 he served as Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute. He also had production roles on films including Heaven, The Quiet American (both 2002), The Interpreter (2005) and Michael Clayton (2007).

He died after an operation for cancer of the tonsils and neck at Charing Cross Hospital in London, his agent announced. He was survived by his wife Charolyn Choa and two grown-up children, Max and Hannah.

The esteemed producer and BAFTA fellow, David Puttnam, was among those to pay tribute to him, saying: "He’s going to be hugely missed. He was a major figure in an important industry and had a lot to go on and contribute."

Photograph © Berlinale Talent Campus