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
The thing about talking about human rights is that when one bears in mind the sharp end of it, one does not want to worry too much about semantics.
He's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it
I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play.
One feels that the past stays the way you left it, whereas the present is in constant movement; it's unstable all around you.
One senses that all the Bolsheviks, even those who ended up as cold-blooded autocrats, had been on a journey from idealism to something else, and didn't notice - to mix periods - when the Rubicon was crossed.
I think probably I've been influenced by Chekhov and Walt Disney, if you see what I mean.
Everybody I know is writing plays twice a year. It's sort of making me feel I am not up to much.
Somebody who likes to do my plays is a good director for them.
Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism.
Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came across a textual problem.
I like trying to create a spark through a collaboration between me and the audience.
Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, you give a little laugh. It's like a reflex.
What Tolstoy is on about is that carnal love is not a good idea.
When I was 20, the idea of having a play on anywhere was just beyond my dreams.