Born in Princeton, Illinois to John Nelson and Ellen Boyd, McAnuff is a citizen of the United States and Canada.
[citation needed] McAnuff was artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, which he revived in 1983, during which time the theatre won more than 200 awards.
[citation needed] For the Playhouse, he directed Romeo and Juliet, A Mad World, My Masters, Big River, As You Like It, The Sea Gull, The Matchmaker, A Walk in the Woods, Two Rooms, 80 Days, Macbeth, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Twelfth Night, Three Sisters, Elmer Gantry, Much Ado About Nothing, The Who's Tommy and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
[2][3] In 2008, after a year sharing power with Don Shipley and Marti Maraden, McAnuff became the sole artistic director at Stratford.
McAnuff has directed two motion pictures, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000) and Cousin Bette (1998), both of which failed critically and at the box-office.
[4] During the 2011-12 Season at the Metropolitan Opera he directed a new production of Charles Gounod's Faust starring soprano Marina Poplavskaya and tenor Jonas Kaufmann.