Tom Stoppard, the good, beloved playwright who gained Tonys for writing “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Useless,” “The Actual Factor,” “Travesties,” “The Coast of Utopia,” and “Leopoldstadt,” has died. He was 88 years previous.
Stoppard’s company, United Brokers, introduced the information on its web site.
“We’re deeply saddened to announce that our beloved shopper and buddy, Tom Stoppard, has died peacefully at house in Dorset, surrounded by his household,” the publish said. “He shall be remembered for his works, for his or her brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit, and his profound love of the English language. It was an honour to work with Tom and to know him.”
Stoppard was a cherished and acclaimed fixture of theater on either side of the Atlantic who wrote greater than 30 performs throughout an iconic profession, incomes three Laurence Olivier Awards for “Arcadia” (1994), “Heroes” (2006), and “Leopoldstadt” (2020). Celebrated for his cerebral writing and savvy, entertaining variations of basic works of literature and philosophy, Stoppard was usually in comparison with our best dramatists — and never solely as a result of his personal work constructed on the likes of William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, and lots of extra. His enduring impression even landed him an adjective all his personal within the Oxford English Dictionary: “Stoppardian,” which suggests “to make use of elegant wit whereas addressing philosophical issues, within the type of Tom Stoppard.”
Stoppard gained an Academy Award for “Shakespeare in Love” in 1998 (for Greatest Authentic Screenplay, shared with Marc Norman) and secured a nomination for “Brazil” in 1985 (for Greatest Authentic Screenplay, shared with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown).
He frolicked writing for tv within the ’60s and ’70s earlier than engaged on the screenplays for “Empire of the Solar” and “Brazil” within the ’80s. In 1990, he wrote and directed the variation of his personal play, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Useless,” starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, for which he gained the Golden Lion on the Venice Movie Pageant.
He additionally labored on “The Russia Home” starring Sean Connery, “Billy Bathgate” with Nicole Kidman, “Anna Karenina” with Keira Knightley, and “Tulip Fever” with Alicia Vikander in 2017. He returned to tv for HBO’s restricted collection “Parade’s Finish,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, in 2012, for which he earned an Emmy nomination.
Stoppard was additionally a screenwriting fixer, referred to as in to tinker with blockbuster movies like “Indiana Jones and the Final Campaign,” “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” “Sleepy Hole,” and “Schindler’s Record.”
Born Tomáš Sträussler in Czechoslovakia in 1937, Stoppard’s household moved to Singapore to flee the Nazis when he was nonetheless a child. His father died when Stoppard was 4 years previous, whereas serving as a physician within the British military, and his mom — after transferring to India in 1941 — married a British officer named Kenneth Stoppard. The brand new household settled in England in 1946, and Stoppard didn’t be taught of his Jewish heritage till he was in his 50s.
Stoppard by no means attended college and began working as a journalist and writing radio performs earlier than he was 20. He wrote theater critiques underneath a pseudonym when he moved to London, and began writing his personal stage performs after transferring to Berlin with a grant from the Ford Basis. An insatiable reader, Stoppard died at his house in Dorset, England.
