British director Anthony Minghella, who won an Oscar for The English Patient and helmed other acclaimed films such as Cold Mountain, has died of a hemorrhage.

British film director Anthony Minghella, holding his Oscar for best director in 1997 for The English Patient, was also a screenwriter and playwright.
(Reed Saxon/Associated Press)

Leslee Dart, a spokesman for the filmmaker, said Minghella died at London's Charing Cross Hospital after being treated for tonsil cancer.

Dart said the director was operated on last week for a growth in his neck, "and the operation seemed to have gone well. At 5 a.m. today, he had a fatal hemorrhage."

"He was a really beautiful man, a lot of fun to be with. He was a storyteller in a classic British David Lean tradition," longtime friend and producer David Puttnam told BBC News.

"The performances he got out of actors were overwhelmingly good. This is someone who was a major figure and it will be a long time before we get over his loss."

Former British prime minister Tony Blair called Minghella a "wonderful human being, creative and brilliant."

"Whatever I did with him, personally or professionally, left me with complete admiration for him, as a character and as an artist of the highest calibre," said Blair, who became friends with Minghella after he directed a Labour party election ad in 2005.

The 54-year-old screenwriter and playwright made his cinematic mark with 1996's The English Patient, which captured nine Oscars, including best picture and a best supporting actress trophy for Juliette Binoche.

The film, starring Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas, was based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, who worked closely with Minghella on the screen adaptation.

'I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write.'—Anthony Minghella

Ondaatje has said he was satisfied with the adaptation of his work, which focuses on the recollections of a Second World War burn victim, his misdeeds and his love affair with a married woman.

"I had never thought of myself as a director and found out that I was not. I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write," Minghella said at an event last week hosted by BAFTA — the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Though lauded for his filmmaking abilities, Minghella has said he's always had doubts about his skills.

"It is as if I have been working in a tunnel and I've no idea what the reaction is going to be," he said in a 2000 interview with the Sunday Times of London. "It is a naked thing to admit, but I feel very strongly that I want people to appreciate that I am not just a flash in the pan."

Studied drama, directed plays

Minghella, one of five children, grew up above the family's ice cream shop on the Isle of Wight, where his family still lives and runs a popular chain of shops.

A worker at one of the shops told the Manchester Evening News that the director's death was "really raw" for all his family and friends.

Minghella studied drama at the University of Hull.

He launched his theatre career in 1985 with his piece Whale Music. During the 1980s, he directed plays as well as worked at script editing for children's drama at the BBC.

His 1990 feature film Truly Madly Deeply, originally written for the BBC, was released theatrically to some acclaim.

Director Anthony Minghella and his wife Carolyn Choa are seen here attending the London Film Festival in October.
(Stuart Wilson/Getty Images)

His other notable films include 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain, starring Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman. Zellweger garnered a best supporting Oscar.

In 2001, Minghella was appointed a Commander of the British Empire.

In 2005, Minghella staged a production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly with the English National Opera. It was then selected to open 2006-07 season of New York's Metropolitan Opera.

The new version, which used Japanese theatre techniques and naturalistic acting, is still playing at the Met this season and is expected to be revived next season as well.

"The job for me is to tell the story, no matter where I am working. That purpose has been constant," the director once told Opera News.

Minghella was reportedly at work on a libretto for a future Met commission with Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov. Tentatively titled Daedalus, it was slated to take the stage during the Met's 2011-2012 season.

In February, he sat on the jury of the Glenn Gould Prize along with Canadian tenor Ben Heppner. The honour, named after the renowned Canadian pianist, was handed to Venezuela's Jose Antonio Abreu — an accomplished musician, economist, politician and children's rights activist.

Minghella had just completed a television adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's popular book series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Ladies Agency, with its indomitable main character Mma Precious Ramotswe of Botswana.

TV movie to air on the weekend

The director recently said filming in the small African nation was an "amazing experience."

"Particularly fascinating to me was working and filming in an African country where old and new are currently co-existing, where traditional values have not yet been eroded by the demands and efficiencies and neuroses of the modern," said Minghella.

The TV movie is slated to air Sunday on the BBC.

His latest project took him to New York City, where he directed an anthology of love stories he had written.

Minghella, who recently stepped down as chair of the British Film Institute, is survived by his wife, choreographer Carolyn Choa, and two children. His brother, Dominic, is also a successful scriptwriter.