53 Facts About Tom Stoppard

1.

Sir Tom Stoppard was born on, 3 July 1937 and is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter.

2.

Tom Stoppard has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays.

3.

Tom Stoppard's work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society.

4.

Tom Stoppard was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.

5.

Tom Stoppard settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas.

6.

Tom Stoppard is known for his screenplays including Brazil, Empire of the Sun, The Russia House, Billy Bathgate, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma, and Anna Karenina.

7.

Tom Stoppard directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.

8.

Tom Stoppard has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and four Tony Awards.

9.

Tom Stoppard is the son of Martha Beckova and Eugen Straussler, a doctor employed by the Bata shoe company.

10.

Tom Stoppard's father remained in Singapore as a British army volunteer, knowing that as a doctor, he would be needed in its defense.

11.

In 1945, his mother, Martha, married British army major Kenneth Tom Stoppard, who gave the boys his English surname and moved the family to England in 1946.

12.

Tom Stoppard left school at 17 and began work as a journalist for the Western Daily Press in Bristol, without attending university.

13.

Tom Stoppard worked at the paper from 1954 until 1958, when the Bristol Evening World offered Stoppard the position of feature writer, humor columnist, and secondary drama critic, which took him into the world of theater.

14.

At the Bristol Old Vic, at the time a well-regarded regional repertory company, Tom Stoppard formed friendships with director John Boorman and actor Peter O'Toole early in their careers.

15.

Tom Stoppard has said the work owed much to Robert Bolt's Flowering Cherry and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

16.

From September 1962 until April 1963, Tom Stoppard worked in London as a drama critic for Scene magazine, writing reviews and interviews both under his name and the pseudonym William Boot.

17.

In 1964, a Ford Foundation grant enabled Tom Stoppard to spend 5 months writing in a Berlin mansion, emerging with a one-act play titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, which later evolved into his Tony-winning play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

18.

Tom Stoppard has written one novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon, set in contemporary London.

19.

Tom Stoppard has been co-opted into the Outrapo group, a far-from-serious French movement to improve actors' stage technique through science.

20.

In 1985, Tom Stoppard co-wrote with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown a feature film, the satirical science-fiction dark comedy Brazil.

21.

Tom Stoppard went on to write the scripts for Steven Spielberg, Empire of the Sun, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

22.

Spielberg later stated that though Tom Stoppard was uncredited for the latter of the two, "he was responsible for almost every line of dialogue in the film".

23.

In 1993, Tom Stoppard wrote Arcadia, a play in which he explores the interaction between two modern academics and the residents of a Derbyshire country house in the early 19th century, including aristocrats, tutors and the fleeting presence, unseen on stage, of Lord Byron.

24.

Tom Stoppard gained acclaim with the feature film Shakespeare in Love which he wrote.

25.

Tom Stoppard received his second career Oscar nomination and first win for Best Original Screenplay.

26.

Tom Stoppard received the BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for his screenplay.

27.

The Coast of Utopia was a trilogy of plays Tom Stoppard wrote about the philosophical arguments among Russian revolutionary figures in the late 19th century.

28.

Tom Stoppard served on the advisory board of the magazine Standpoint, and was instrumental in its foundation, giving the opening speech at its launch.

29.

Tom Stoppard is a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres.

30.

Tom Stoppard was appointed president of the London Library in 2002 and vice-president in 2017 following the election of Sir Tim Rice as president.

31.

For Joe Wright, Tom Stoppard adapted Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina into the 2012 film adaptation starring Keira Knightley.

32.

In 2013, Tom Stoppard wrote a five part limited series Parade's End which revolves around a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat, his mean socialite wife and a young suffragette.

33.

Tom Stoppard received a British Academy Television Award and Primetime Emmy Award nomination for the series.

34.

Tom Stoppard has co-written screenplays including Shakespeare in Love and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

35.

Steven Spielberg states that though Tom Stoppard was uncredited for the latter, "he was responsible for almost every line of dialogue in the film".

36.

Tom Stoppard worked in a similar capacity with Tim Burton on his film Sleepy Hollow.

37.

Tom Stoppard's plays have been sometimes dismissed as pieces of clever showmanship, lacking in substance, social commitment, or emotional weight.

38.

The accusations of favouring intellectuality over political commitment or commentary were met with a change of tack, as Tom Stoppard produced increasingly socially engaged work.

39.

Tom Stoppard became involved with Index on Censorship, Amnesty International, and the Committee Against Psychiatric Abuse and wrote various newspaper articles and letters about human rights.

40.

Tom Stoppard was instrumental in translating Havel's works into English.

41.

Tom Stoppard acknowledges that around 1982 he moved away from the "argumentative" works and more towards plays of the heart, as he became "less shy" about emotional openness.

42.

Tom Stoppard was inspired by a Trevor Nunn production of Gorky's Summerfolk to write a trilogy of "human" plays: The Coast of Utopia.

43.

Tom Stoppard has commented that he loves the medium of theatre for how "adjustable" it is at every point, how unfrozen it is, continuously growing and developing through each rehearsal, free from the text.

44.

Tom Stoppard had a relationship with actress Sinead Cusack, but she made it clear she wished to remain married to Jeremy Irons and stay close to their two sons.

45.

Tom Stoppard has two sons from each of his first two marriages: Oliver Stoppard, Barnaby Stoppard, the actor Ed Stoppard, and Will Stoppard, who is married to violinist Linzi Stoppard.

46.

Tom Stoppard has expressed grief both for a lost father and a missing past, but he has no sense of being a survivor, at whatever remove.

47.

In 2013, Tom Stoppard asked Hermione Lee to write his biography.

48.

The Tom Stoppard Prize was created in 1983 under the Charter 77 Foundation and is awarded to authors of Czech origin.

49.

In July 2017, Tom Stoppard was elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

50.

Tom Stoppard sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill, and a bronze head is in public collection, situated with the Stoppard papers in the reading room of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

51.

The correspondence file relating to the Tom Stoppard bust is held in the archive of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds.

52.

Tom Stoppard sat for the sculptor and friend Angela Conner, and his bronze portrait bust is on display in the grounds of Chatsworth House.

53.

The papers of Tom Stoppard are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.