Tom Stoppard, celebrated playwright and screenwriter behind Shakespeare in Love, dies at 88
Tom Stoppard, the Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter whose work shaped contemporary theatre and film, has died aged 88.
His agents announced that he died at his home in Dorset, surrounded by his family. In a statement, they said he would be remembered for “his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language”.
Stoppard won five Tony Awards for best play, beginning with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1968 and concluding with Leopoldstadt. His work in film brought similar acclaim.
He received an Academy Award for his contribution to Shakespeare in Love (1998), which added a fictional narrative to Shakespeare’s life and was directed by John Madden.
Stoppard noted at the time that the challenge of writing dialogue for Shakespeare involved deciding “how does Shakespeare speak when he’s just speaking to a friend?”
His early screen career included an Oscar nomination for co-writing Brazil (1985) with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown.
He adapted John le Carré’s The Russia House (1990) and completed an uncredited revision of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), with Steven Spielberg stating that Stoppard was “pretty much responsible for every line of dialogue”.
His other screenwriting credits included Empire of the Sun (1987), Billy Bathgate (1991), Enigma (2001), Anna Karenina (2012) and Tulip Fever (2017).
Born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, he fled with his family during the Second World War and eventually settled in England, where he adopted the name Tom Stoppard.
He began his career as a journalist, working for the Western Daily Press and later the Bristol Evening World, where he was a feature writer, humour columnist and secondary drama critic.
Stoppard remained closely associated with theatre throughout his life, describing himself as “a theatre writer who sometimes does other stuff”.