After harrowing experiences as a nurse at Sir Archibald McIndoe's pioneering plastic surgery hospital in East Grinstead, Anne Coates started to fulfil her long-held ambition to be a film director with a company called Religious Films. The work consisted of patching up prints of devotional shorts before sending them out to Britain's churches. This led to a job in the cutting room at Pinewood, where she worked on "The Red Shoes" among others before achieving her first screen credit with "The Pickwick Papers".