Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM CBE FRSLis a British playwright and screenwriter, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil, The Russia House, and Shakespeare in Love, and has received one Academy Award and four Tony Awards. Themes of human rights, censorship and...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth3 July 1937
CityZlin, Czech Republic
I think I give the impression of being a romantic, and I think inside I'm quite severe. But some might say they had the opposite impression of me.
I think probably I've been influenced by Chekhov and Walt Disney, if you see what I mean.
I think of myself as a theater animal instead of an intellectual animal.
I think I enlist comedy to a serious purpose.
When I was 20, the idea of having a play on anywhere was just beyond my dreams.
I don't respond well to the Olympic noise, which is the noise of nationalistic triumphalism.
I don't know that I want to share all my most intimate secrets.
I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.
I am aware, as everybody has to be, that there's more competition for one's attention nowadays.
I am good at being shown something and counterpunching.
I wish I could remember how to write a play. I can't remember how they happened.
I would count myself as a friend of Vaclav Havel.
I don't even know what my voice is to this day.
I don't feel that I belong anywhere. Or rather, if there's a place I belong, I don't feel I'm there.