Judy Craymer, the producer of the stage show Mamma Mia!, received a letter seven years ago from an adoring fan. It was from Meryl Streep, who had taken “six screaming 11-year-olds” to see the production in the hope of light relief from the horrors of 9/11.

This was the first step in the show's long journey to Hollywood. Within a few years Streep had agreed to take on a starring role in Mamma Mia! The Movie. Like the stage show, the film was to become a global phenomenon.

However, Ms Craymer told The Times recently that it took some time to win people round to her and Streep's way of thinking. “Producing a film is not for the faint-hearted,” she said, “but musicals adapted for the cinema can run the risk of being pigeonholed. I had to work hard convincing a lot people who thought musicals were not particularly hip that Mamma Mia! was different.

“They soon realised that it wasn't a typical musical. Meryl Streep gets 007 [Pierce Brosnan] and Darcy [Colin Firth] and 007 sings Abba songs. Even 15-year-olds swoon at Darcy and 007,” Ms Craymer said, adding that at a test screening of the film for 13-year-olds in San Diego in March the children were up dancing for the duration.

Ms Craymer, who grew up in North London, studied stage management and music at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She began her career as assistant stage manager at the Leicester Haymarket, working alongside Cameron Mackintosh. According to one report, she lived in an unheated house and had to shower at the theatre. Her financial position has changed somewhat since the stage show of Mamma Mia! opened in London in 1999 and the film attained instant success.

In the 1980s Ms Craymer persuaded Tim Rice to take her on as an assistant, rising to become executive producer of his musical Chess, written with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, of Abba. This was her introduction to the Swedish pair, but it took time for them to agree to the Mamma Mia! stage production. She went on to a successful career in film and television. By 1996 she had assembled a creative team, commissioning Catherine Johnson's Mamma Mia! script and persuading the opera director Phyllida Lloyd to join them.

In 2002 Mamma Mia! was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Musical on Broadway, and in 2007 Ms Craymer was appointed MBE for her contribution to the music industry.