Stage, TV and film director motivated by a desire to tell relevant and provocative stories
As the director Antonia Bird, who has died aged 62 from anaplastic thyroid cancer, moved from the stage into television and film, she retained the ideals that had come out of the political radicalisation of theatre during the 1970s. Though she was at home in other genres, as with the horror-movie satire Ravenous (1999), her main aim was to use whatever medium she was working in, however commercial or mainstream, to tell important stories, highlight issues and champion causes.
In 1985 the producers of the groundbreaking BBC TV soap EastEnders recruited Antonia to direct 17 early episodes, including the renowned two-hander focusing on the disintegrating marriage of Den and Angie Watts (Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson). She was the initial director on the BBC's drama Casualty (1986-87), responsible for casting and keen to ensure that the writers used this prime-time format to tackle important and controversial subjects.
Her five-part television adaptation of Ann Oakley's feminist novel The Men's Room (1991) starred Harriet Walter, Amanda Redman and Bill Nighy. Through it Nighy, playing a lecherous academic, came to wider attention.
Antonia's own breakthrough came with Safe (1993), a feature film for the BBC based on the lives of a group of homeless young people – Aiden Gillen, Robert Carlyle and myself – in the West End of London. It won both a Bafta award and an Edinburgh festival first film award. The controversial Priest (1994) had a cinema release before its broadcast in the BBC's Screen Two series. Written by Jimmy McGovern in the wake of his criminal psychology drama Cracker, it tells of a young, gay but conservative priest (Father Greg, played by Linus Roache) encountering an older, more radical colleague (Tom Wilkinson). Greg's position is undermined by an indecency charge; he also becomes aware through the confessional of a girl's abuse by her father. This came at a time of growing discussion of priests, celibacy, sex and hypocrisy.
Hollywood called, and Antonia directed her first film there, Mad Love (1995), starring Drew Barrymore and Chris O'Donnell as a young couple on the run. It emerged rather crushed from the studio system and she returned to London to shoot the gangster film Face (1997), with Ray Winstone, Damon Albarn and Carlyle, who played a bank robber disillusioned by the failure of socialism in 1980s Britain. Carlyle was again the star in her next US venture, Ravenous, as a stranger arriving at a 19th-century US army fort with a tale of cannibalism. By this time, Antonia was keen to gain more creative control. Carlyle joined her in the setting up of her production company, 4Way Pictures, along with the documentary-maker and film critic Mark Cousins and the novelist Irvine Welsh, who saw her as "an amazing life force; a powerhouse of ideas, enthusiasm and positivity".
Her BBC film Care (2000), starring Steven Mackintosh, was a fictionalised account of sexual abuse in children's homes, and won Bafta and Prix Italia awards. Other credits included Rehab (2003), The Hamburg Cell (2004), a fictionalised account of the 9/11 bombers, and a film-length episode of Cracker (2006), in which McGovern returned to the couple at the heart of his 1990s success, played by Robbie Coltrane and Barbara Flynn. Antonia's documentary debut came with Off By Heart (2009). Produced and directed by her for the BBC, it followed primary schoolchildren from across Britain in a poetry recitation competition, and brought her another Bafta award. She was the principal director on Peter Moffat's The Village, the first episodes of which, recounting the often harsh reality of rural Derbyshire life in the early years of the 20th century, were seen on BBC1 earlier this year.
Born in London, Antonia was the daughter of a stage manager mother, Rosemary, and an actor father, Michael. By her 17th birthday she was working as an assistant stage manager at Coventry Rep, where she also became involved in publicity, theatre administration and acting. It was suffering from terrible stage fright that fortuitously settled her on the path of directing. She then joined Michael Bogdanov's innovative company at the Phoenix theatre, Leicester, directing a variety of productions, including Joe Orton's What The Butler Saw.
In 1978 Antonia went to the Royal Court theatre, London, as a resident director. Passionate about new writing, she worked with Hanif Kureishi, Samuel Beckett and Trevor Griffiths, and was the driving force behind Jim Cartwright's Road being premiered in 1986.
At the National Theatre she was assistant director to Richard Eyre on his production of Guys and Dolls, and directed its West End transfer (1985-86). Her casting of Clarke Peters as the first black Sky Masterson was a typically inspired move.
Once she had started with EastEnders, Antonia never returned to the theatre: she loved the way in which working with actors on film enabled her "to really capture the light in their eyes". She had no time for the manipulation that can go on in the director-actor relationship. Instead, she put great energy into supporting her actors on and off set. I was lucky enough to work as an actor with her six times and came to understand only later how remarkable her attitude was. Along with many others, I will miss her hugely.
She is survived by her beloved husband, Ian Ilett.
• Antonia Bird, film and TV director, born 27 May 1951; died 24 October 2013