Following war service flying on 34 missions in Lancaster bombers,[2] he trained as an actor[3] at the Guildhall School of Drama,[4] but following graduation pursued a career in stage management.

Issacs wrote in 2017, that Rose's first suggestion to him was to commission a soap from Phil Redmond, the result Brookside ran for 21 years until ending in 2003.

[14] Rose is credited by many as being a significant figure in the regeneration of British cinema and particularly remembered for films such as My Beautiful Laundrette, Wish You Were Here, Dance With a Stranger, Mona Lisa, and Letter to Brezhnev.

"[9] Of the 150 films Rose backed, 20 were from overseas sources, including work by directors Theo Angelopoulos, Andrei Tarkovsky and Wim Wenders.

[15] This was followed by the gold medal of the Royal Television Society in 1988[6] and, in April 2010, the BFI Fellowship, whose other recipients include Martin Scorsese and Orson Welles.