Jonathan Miller's career has covered many different fields: author, lecturer, television producer and presenter, theatre, opera and film director.

Born in London, the son of a distinguished child psychiatrist, he was educated at St. Paul's School, read natural sciences at St John's College, Cambridge and qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1959.

Whilst at university, Jonathan Miller appeared as a member of the Cambridge Footlights and subsequently accepted an invitation to co-author and appear in "Beyond the Fringe" with Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. This now legendary satirical review opened at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960 and later transferred to London and New York.

Thereafter, Jonathan Miller's career has been inextricably linked with the stage and he has directed many memorable productions - The Merchant of Venice with Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright, The Taming of the Shrew (RSC), The Seagull (Chichester Festival Theatre), A Long Day's Journey Into Night (Haymarket Theatre) and The Emperor (Royal Court). Between January 1988 and October 1990, as Artistic Director of the Old Vic, Dr. Miller directed a number of highly acclaimed productions including Andromache with Janet Suzman, The Tempest with Max von Sydow, King Lear and Corneille's comedy The Liar. More recent productions in London include A Midsummer Night's Dream (Almeida Theatre), The Beggar's Opera for Broomhill Opera, and Camera Obscura, again for the Almeida Theatre, and also King Lear at the Lincoln Center, New York. He has most recently had a huge success with Chekov's The Cherry Orchard at The Crucible, Sheffield.

Jonathan Miller's involvement in the world of opera began when he was invited to direct the British premiere in 1974 of Arden Must Die by Alexander Goehr. He spent several seasons working closely with Kent Opera, and subsequently with English National Opera for which he directed some of his most enduring successes - The Marriage of Figaro, The Turn of the Screw, Rosenkavalier, Carmen, and The Mikado and Rigoletto, both of which have been revived in 2006.

He has also worked at many of the world's leading opera houses - the Maggio Musicale, Florence; La Scala, Milan; Metropolitan Opera, New York; Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin; Bayerische Staatsopera; Vienna Staatsoper; Salzburg Festival and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Recently he has directed productions in Florence, Stockholm, London, Tokyo and at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. Last season's productions include Cosi fan tutti in Seattle, Jenufa at Glimmerglass, La Traviata in Vilnius and Bach's St. Matthew Passion in New York. This season he directs l'Elisir d'Amore at New York City Opera, Don Giovanni at the Palau in Valencia, Rosenkavalier at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, Fidelio at Den Jyske Opera, Aarhus and he will be reviving his hugely successful Cosi fanTutte at the Royal Opera House, London. In addition, his semi-staging of Monteverdi’s Orfeo is enjoying a successful world tour in 2007 with the New London Consort.

For over 30 years Jonathan Miller has contributed prolifically to the BBC and independent television. His 1966 film of Alice in Wonderland is regarded as being one of his greatest achievements. Between 1980-1982 he produced and directed 11 plays for the BBC's prestigious Shakespeare series, in 1984, The Beggar's Opera and in 1985, Cosi fan tutte. His semi-staged performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, which was given in London in 1993, and then in Spain and New York, was also filmed for BBC2.

Television has allowed Dr Miller to explore aspects of his first career as doctor and neurologist. He has written and presented several major series such as The Body in Question, States of Mind, Who Cares, Born Talking, Museums of Madness, Anthropology and more recently, Opera Works. His latest series for the BBC, A Brief History of Disbelief was broadcast in the autumn of 2004 and was repeated on BBC2 soon after. In 2005 he made a 5-part series for BBC Radio 4 entitled Self-made Things.

Jonathan Miller is a frequent lecturer on a wide variety of subjects. He gave a series of lectures at the National Gallery entitled "From the Look of Things" which he subsequently delivered at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and at the Arts Institute of Chicago. He returns to the USA each year as a guest lecturer.

In September 1998, Jonathan Miller was curator of a major exhibition at the National Gallery, London entitled Mirror Image, which explored the pictorial representation of reflection. The following autumn, a book of his photographs and extracts from his notebooks, Nowhere in Particular, was published by Mitchell Beazley.

Jonathan Miller was awarded the honorary title Doctor of Letters by Cambridge University and in 1997, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London. In 1998 he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. He is also a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In June 2002, he was knighted in The Queen's Jubilee Birthday Honours List.