Former BBC drama chief Mark Shivas, who collaborated with Stephen Frears and Alan Bennett and gave the late Anthony Minghella his big break, has died aged 70.
One of the UK's best loved TV and film producers, Shivas was the BBC's first head of films and executive producer for more than 20 pictures.
Headline Pictures, the film production company he co-founded two years ago, said Shivas died peacefully among family on Saturday after a period of undisclosed illness.
Shivas' Headline co-founders Stewart Mackinnon and Kevin Hood said in a statement: "A great and dearly loved man, our thoughts are with Mark's family and friends. We shall miss him enormously."
Shivas joined the BBC drama department in 1969, producing The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Dennis Potter's Casanova, having begun his TV career at Granada.
He produced What If It's Raining? in 1985, the first of several collaborations with the late Anthony Minghella, including Truly Madly Deeply, starring Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson. The television project was judged so successful that it was given a cinema release.
Minghella also wrote another Shivas project, Jim Henson's The Storyteller, in 1987.
Shivas became BBC drama chief in 1988, where his credits included Enchanted April and Stephen Frears' The Snapper and The Van.
He was appointed the first head of BBC Films five years later, overseeing more than 20 films including Antonia Bird's Priest, Michael Winterbottom's Jude and Hideous Kinky, directed by Gilles Mackinnon.
After leaving the BBC he formed independent production company Perpetual Motion Pictures in 1997, and Headline Pictures in 2006.
Shivas helped Headline win the rights from Great Ormond Street to the Peter Pan sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet, in a consortium with BBC Films and the UK Film Council.
Stewart Mackinnon, the chief executive of Headline, said Shivas "had a very good judgment of people".
He added: "What is extraordinary is that he was liked and loved and respected by everyone in this business. That's what is so unusual. It is very difficult to go through this business without falling out with people."
Shivas is survived by his civil partner of 11 years, Karun Thakar.
Jane Tranter, the outgoing controller of BBC Fiction, paid tribute to Shivas.
"Mark was a unique and very special man, whose contribution to both the film and television industry over the past four decades is unmatched. From The Six Wives of Henry VIII to Cambridge Spies, via Talking Heads, The Glittering Prizes, The Storyteller and Churchill: The Wilderness Years, Mark has been behind some of our best and most iconic pieces of British television," she said.
"His contribution via films is no less impressive either in terms of its quantity and quality: The Witches, The Snapper, An Awfully Big Adventure, I Capture the Castle, to name but a few, all demonstrate the range and ambition of Mark as a producer.
"As head of BBC drama, his intelligence, dignity and charm helped guide and shape the careers of many, both in front and behind the camera, and I know that I am not alone in the huge debt of thanks that I owe him for his help in kick starting my career.
"The quiet and very private way he tackled his illness is characteristic of the man, and he will be greatly missed."
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