Anna Mackmin

Life and career

Mackmin was born in Leeds in 1964. She trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Dissatisfied with her acting career, she became a clothing designer at one point and set up a business with her sister in London's Soho neighbourhood. Mackmin was friends with the actress and writer Charlotte Jones, and it was Jones' first play Airswimming which also provided Mackmin with her directorial debut in 1997.

She had only done two plays when Michael Grandage offered her the position of associate director at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. There she scored notable successes with Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine, the latter earning her the 2004 TMA Award for best director. She has also had a successful stint at the Gate Theatre, where her most recent directorial effort was Ibsen's Ghosts.

Mackmin has repeatedly worked with Charlotte Jones since their joint debut, directing Jones' plays In Flame, The Dark and The Lightning Play. She has also collaborated several times with Amelia Bullmore whom she originally directed as an actress in The Crucible in 2004. Since then, she has directed Bullmore's play Mammals and also her adaptation of Ghosts.

In 2006, Mackmin staged an acclaimed triple bill at the National Theatre, entitled Burn/Chatroom/Citizenship. In the spring of 2007, she again won plaudits, this time for her direction of Dying For It, Moira Buffini's 'free adaptation' of Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide.

Anna Mackmin's sister Scarlett Mackmin is a choreographer also working in the London theatre.

Mackmin directed Toby Stephens as Henry in a revival of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at the Old Vic Theatre in London from April through June 2010.