Cameron Mackintosh

Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh (born 17 October 1946) is a British theatrical producer and theatre owner notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals. At the height of his success in 1990, he was described as being "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world" by the New York Times. He is the producer of shows including Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Miss Saigon, Mary Poppins, Oliver!, and Hamilton.

Mackintosh was knighted in 1996 for services to musical theatre. Two of his productions, Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera, are the two longest-running musicals in West End history. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 7 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". In the Sunday Times Rich List of 2021, Mackintosh was estimated to have a net worth of £1.2 billion.

Mackintosh was born in Enfield, London, the son of Diana Gladys (née Tonna), a production secretary, and Ian Robert Mackintosh, a timber merchant and jazz trumpeter. His father was Scottish, and his mother who was a native of Malta, was of Maltese and French descent. Mackintosh was educated at Prior Park College in Bath.

Mackintosh first knew that he wanted to become a theatre producer after his aunt took him to a matinee of the Julian Slade musical Salad Days when he was eight years old.

Mackintosh began his theatre career in his late teens, as a stagehand at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and then became an assistant stage manager on several touring productions. In 1967, working with Robin Alexander, he co-produced five plays at the Kenton Theatre, Henley. He began producing his own small tours before becoming a London-based producer in the 1970s. His early London productions included Anything Goes in 1969 (which closed after two weeks), The Card (1973), Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), My Fair Lady (1978), and Tomfoolery (1980).

In 1981, he produced Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, then considered an unlikely subject for a musical. It became the hit of the season, and went on to become one of the longest running musicals on both sides of the Atlantic. After the success of Cats, he approached the French writing team Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil about bringing their musical Les Misérables (then a successful French concept album) to the London stage. The musical opened in 1985 at the Barbican before transferring to the Palace Theatre. Les Misérables had a shaky start at the box office and a lukewarm critical reception before becoming a massive hit, largely by word-of-mouth and is now the longest running musical and second longest running London production.

In 1986, Mackintosh produced Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which is one of the most commercially successful musicals of all time. The original London production is still running and is the 3rd longest running production in London, along with the now-closed New York production, which became, and remains, the longest-running Broadway show of all time.

He produced Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil's next musical Miss Saigon, which opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the West End in September 1989. It was similarly successful, and the 1991 Broadway production had what was then the largest advance ticket sales in theatre history prior to its controversy. Asian American actors protested the casting of a Caucasian actor and the use of yellowface in the role of the pimp.