London: British film director, Anthony Minghella, who won an Oscar for The English Patient, has died aged 54, a spokeswoman for his agent said on Tuesday.
Minghella won the Academy Award for best director in 1996 for the wartime romance starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.
No details about his death were immediately released, but film producer David Puttnam said it was a "shattering blow".
"He was a great guy, a very, very nice man, a brilliant writer, excellent director and someone who contributed more than most to our industry," Puttnam told BBC News 24. "He's going to be hugely missed."
Minghella was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for the crime thriller The Talented Mr Ripley. He also wrote the screenplay for Cold Mountain.
His previous films included Truly Madly Deeply and Mr Wonderful.
In recent months Minghella had been making a film adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel, The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency for the BBC.
The English Patient, based on author Michael Ondaatje's novel, was an unexpected global hit.
In an interview with Reuters after its release, Minghella said he struggled to raise the money to make the film, which won 12 Oscar nominations.
"It was a very hard job to get someone to give us the money for this," he said. "It was a very unpromising document: a European film about a man haunted from his war-time past, good actors but no stars and a director who had little experience. It was understandable that people (in Hollywood) had no faith in the film. But they were all completely wrong."
Born to Italian parents and brought up on England's Isle of Wight, he studied drama at the University of Hull in northeast England. He began his career writing scripts for theatre and television dramas before moving into feature films.
In 2003, he was appointed the head of the British Film Institute, the body created to make film more accessible to the public. Two years later, he staged his first opera in London.
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