Simon Channing Williams: a life in film

Rachel Weisz in a scene from Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener (2005). Producer Simon Channing Williams is best known for his partnership with Mike Leigh, but his most enduring legacy may stem from this adaptation of the John le Carré novel about big pharma and corporate corruption. Channing Williams led the film's cast and crew in setting up a trust to improve conditions in Nairobi's Kibera slum and the north Kenyan village of Loiyangalani, where the film was shot Photograph: PR

Channing Williams set up the Thin Man Films production company with Mike Leigh in 1988, when they were both rather corpulent. Their first project was High Hopes, a bittersweet comedy about a working-class family in London that became the template for most of their films together Photograph: Kobal

Mike Leigh and Imelda Staunton were both Oscar-nominated for the gruelling abortion drama Vera Drake (2004). The film marked a return to form for the Leigh/Channing Williams partnership – winning them the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, plus a host of other awards – after the downbeat cabbie drama All Or Nothing (2002) left critics and audiences slightly underwhelmed Photograph: PR

Leigh and Channing Williams's last collaboration was a copper-bottomed smash. Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) starred Sally Hawkins as a relentlessly chirpy primary school teacher in north London. Audiences flocked to the cinema to have their socks charmed off; the film also won Leigh a best screenplay nomination at this year's Oscars, and a host of gongs for Hawkins Photograph: PR

David Thewlis as Johnny in Naked (1993). One of Leigh's darker dramas, it told of a Mancunian rapist who flees to London to avoid retribution Photograph: BFI

Pre-Leigh, Channing Williams worked as an assistant director for the BBC and Anglia TV. One of his last roles as first assistant director was on Hugh Hudson's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (1984) Photograph: Corbis Sygma

Channing Williams championed new talent while working with established directors. In 2005 he produced Brothers of the Head, a bizarre but rather brilliant mockumentary directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe about a pair of conjoined twins who are groomed to become a rock act in the 1970s Photograph: PR

Brenda Blethyn was Oscar-nominated for her role as the estranged mother of Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Secrets & Lies (1995) - as, indeed, were Jean-Baptiste, Leigh and Channing Williams himself. The film was an international success, perhaps destined to be the Leigh/Channing Williams collaboration that's most fondly remembered Photograph: Kobal

In production terms, Topsy-Turvy (1999), a drama about the fraught relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan during the making of The Mikado, was one of the most taxing of Leigh and Channing Williams's collaborations. Set in the early 1880s, it clocked in at nearly three hours and featured multiple song and dance numbers. Many questioned the pair's ability to pull it off but, like Gilbert and Sullivan before them, Leigh and Channing Williams proved triumphant Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar/Cinetext Collection

Last year Channing Williams was reunited with Constant Gardener director Fernando Meirelles for Blindness. Based on the novel by José Saramago, it starred Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo as a couple torn apart when the city in which they live suddenly falls victim to an epidemic of instant "white blindness" Photograph: PR