Tom Stoppard Biography

Czech-born British Playwright, Writer and Screenwriter

Jul 3, 2008
Tel Asiado

Tom Stoppard, Czech-born British Playwright - wikimedia Commons

Brief biography of Sir Tom Stoppard, one of the 20th century's greatest playwrights, famous for his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Sir Tom Stoppard, OM and CBE, is one of the 20th-century's major British playwrights. He is the author of many plays, including the trilogy The Coast of Utopia (2003) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967), a comic retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet. He also co-wrote screenplays for Oscar winning screenplay Shakespeare in Love, and Brazil.

Early Life of Tom Stoppard

Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937, in Zlin, Czechoslovakia. His family traveled extensively during his early life. With World War II raging in Europe, they settled first in Singapore and then in India, where Tom's father was killed. His mother married a British army officer, and Tom took his stepfather's name, Stoppard. In 1945 the family moved to Bristol, England. After attending schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, he became a journalist in Bristol.

When he was 17, Stoppard got his first job as a reporter. Six years later he suddenly decided to commit himself seriously to creative writing. He resigned from his job and moved to London, where he was soon working for radio writing plays. He also became a freelance journalist and theatre critic. When he was 26, he sold his first play, A Walk on the Water, which was produced for television.

Prolific Successful Playwright Stoppard

Four years later, in 1967, Stoppard wrote his most famous play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It was an immediate success and won him the New York Drama Critcs' Circle Award. The play features two minor characters from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, caught up in the events that examine life's meaning. This was the first of a string of award-winning works, including Travesties, written for the Royal Shakespeare Company. During this time he married his second wife, the well-known writer and physician Dr. Miriam Stoppard, and divorced in 1992.

In 1977, he collaborated with André Previn on a play for actors and orchestra, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, performed with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Stoppard's writing is always original, often blending ideas about science, art and religion. Sometimes his plays have been compared with Samuel Beckett's in terms of despair, humour, and hope of being alive in loneliness. He has also written several successful screenplays adapted from books by other authors.

Honours and Awards of Stoppard