Anthony Minghella

by MovieMaker Staff | Published February 5, 2007

Though you might think of Anthony Minghella as only a director, it is the screenwriting trade that first brought the now world-famous moviemaker to a career in film. Born to Scottish-Italian parents in 1954, Minghella worked briefly as a university professor, where he began writing music and plays. By 1984, he had won the London Theater Critics Award for Most Promising Playwright. Eventually, Minghella would move to television writing, making his directorial debut with the 1991 BBC made-for-TV film Truly, Madly, Deeply. When the company decided to release his film into theaters, Minghella would make the leap from small screen to big with almost immediate success, winning a BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay in the process.

In 1996, the writer-director showed his talent for epic romances with The English Patient. The film would be nominated for 12 Academy Awards, winning a total of nine, including Best Picture and Best Director, catapulting Minghella to international fame. Most recently, Minghella has teamed up for a third time with actor Jude Law in Breaking and Entering, which opens in limited release on February 9. An examination of the repercussions of literal and emotional theft, Breaking and Entering pairs Law with The English Patient star Juliette Binoche in a story of love and betrayal that crosses class boundaries in modern-day London. Says Minghella of writing his first original script since Truly, Madly, Deeply: â€œOddly enough, when Iâ€™m writing, I donâ€™t really think about actors. The truth is that, in the most banal sense, writing is an investigation of selfâ€¦ What I aspire to, as a writer, is to go as deeply into my own turmoil and debate and pain and joy, and try and animate it in some way.â€

For more information on Breaking and Entering, visit its website.

Sound Off: Do you agree with Minghellaâ€™s assertion that â€œwriting is an investigation of self?â€ Why or why not? Let us know in the comments section!

Director Anthony Minghella of Weinstein Company’s Breaking and Entering - 2006.

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Comment by Guillermo R. on 2/05/07 at 4:27 pm: Yes I do. I can only write what I know, and I know my life and past. I think as writers we don’t want to just invent a story, we also want to say something to the world. It comes from ourselves, our lives and experiences. To that I would add that writing is not only investigation of self, it is also reconciliation and acceptance of self.
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Comment by Erica M. on 2/05/07 at 5:03 pm: Totally! I can’t think of anything I’ve written that is not part of my voyage of self-discovery. And I’ve learned so much of what makes me tick by writing, no matter whether characters and/or events are based on myself or completely pulled out of the air. What a wonderful quote from Minghella!
Comment by Charles Smith on 2/20/07 at 8:28 pm: Ideally, unless one is writing one’s own diary, the writer must inject enough energy through his (or her) own experience to enlarge that experience to encompass (and, hopefully shed light on)a larger sociological truth.