After an early career in advertising, he turned to film production in the late 1960s. His successes as a producer include Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), Local Hero, The Killing Fields, The Mission and Memphis Belle (1990). He was Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Columbia Pictures from 1986 to 1988.
He was knighted in 1995 and made a life peer in 1997. In 2002 he chaired the joint scrutiny committee on the Communications Bill, which recommended an amendment to prevent ownership of British terrestrial TV stations by companies with a significant share of the newspaper market. This was widely interpreted as being aimed at stopping Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation from buying Channel 5. When the government opposed the amendment, Puttnam brokered a compromise - the introduction of a "public interest" test to be applied by the new regulator Ofcom, but without explicit restrictions.
See also: Roland Joffé