Cameron Mackintosh has been producing shows since 1967 and remains the world’s most prolific producer of musicals in theatre history. As well as producing three of the world’s longest running musicals – Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats – his legendary productions include Miss Saigon, Oliver!, Mary Poppins (co-produced with Disney), Side By Side By Sondheim, Little Shop of Horrors, Song and Dance, Tomfoolery, Martin Guerre, The Witches of Eastwick and Five Guys Named Moe. His acclaimed productions of My Fair Lady, Oklahoma! and Carousel have all been international successes, as have his reinvented new productions of Les Misérables, Miss Saigon and The Phantom of the Opera. Cameron is also co-producer with Jeffrey Seller of Hamilton in London.
In 2013, alongside Working Title Films and Universal, Cameron produced the hugely successful Oscar®, Golden Globe and BAFTA award-winning film adaptation of Les Misérables, which is one of the most successful movies ever of an original stage musical. The concert version of Les Misérables, which was first staged in 1989 at Domain Park in Sydney, has proved to be just as successful as the staged musical around the world. It has been filmed three times – at the Royal Albert Hall, the O2 Arena and the Gielgud Theatre – and is continually rescreened on TV and in cinemas throughout the world and, alongside his spectacular Royal Albert Hall production of The Phantom of the Opera, regularly breaks attendance records for live recording performances of musical theatre.
Cameron owns and operates eight historic London theatres, which have all been spectacularly rebuilt and refurbished for the 21st century. They house many of London’s most successful hits. The Sondheim, formerly known as the Queen’s, now has a glorious auditorium and backstage and has been renamed in honour of Cameron’s great friend, theatrical legend Stephen Sondheim, who recently died. The last show he and Cameron were working on, Old Friends, premiered onstage and then TV as a sensational all-star gala last year and is now opening at the Gielgud this September for a limited season with a terrific cast including many of those from the gala, headed by Broadway legends Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga.
In 1990, Cameron inaugurated the Chair of Contemporary Theatre at St Catherine’s College in Oxford University, with Stephen Sondheim as his visiting professor. Music Theatre International, the world’s largest owner of secondary rights of many of the greatest musicals ever written, is now one of Cameron’s companies.
Cameron was knighted in the 1996 New Year’s Honours for his services to British theatre and in June 2023, was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. He is the first British producer ever to be elected to Broadway’s Theater Hall of Fame.
