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
It's very common for people to recommend something to me because they're going on what I've already written, when, what really is the case, is that you want to write about something you haven't written about, in ways that you haven't done before.
I like dialogue that is slightly more brittle than life. I have always admired and wished to write one of those 1940s film scripts where every line is written with a sharpness and economy that is frankly artificial.
I have two garden parties a year to avoid going out to dinner.
It's so great in the theater when everyone catches up on the truth.
the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics and audience.
Theatre probably originated without texts, but by the time we get to the classical Greek period, theatre has become text-based.
I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something that - even if it can't be quantitatively measured as other subjects - it's as fundamental to all education.
I'm not interested in clothes; I just like them.
I flinch when I see my name in the newspapers.
I'm very unhappy about my entire life if my writing is going wrong.
I'm very garrulous, but I don't say anything.
I'm not that taken with Freudian perspectives. They seem to be overcomplicated.
I like the notion of theater as recreational.
It's wholly deserved and I am completely thrilled. As a writer he has been unswerving for 50 years, ... a most fitting award.