British playwright Tom Stoppard, who won Oscar for ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ dead at 88

By Max Saltman, CNN

(CNN) — The award-winning British playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard has died, according to his talent agency United Agents. He was 88.

Stoppard, who was born in Czechoslovakia, was perhaps best known in the US for his Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1998 film “Shakespeare in Love,” which he co-wrote with Marc Norman.

More recently, he won his fifth Tony Award in 2023 for his play “Leopoldstadt.” He won his first Tony in 1968 for “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” his metatheatrical spin on “Hamlet.”

Norman told CNN in an email that Stoppard was “a joy to work with.”

“He understood that Shakespeare, that icon, was an entertainer just like we were, and that spirit drove our screenplay,” Norman said. “My thoughts go out to his family.”

In a statement posted to its website, United Agents said: “We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved client and friend, Tom Stoppard, has died peacefully at home in Dorset, surrounded by his family.

“He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language,” the statement continued. “It was an honor to work with Tom and to know him.”

Born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, in what is now the Czech Republic, Stoppard was from a secular Jewish family who fled the Nazi invasion of the country in 1939, first to Singapore, then to Australia and India. Many of Stoppard’s extended family members were murdered in the Holocaust.

After young Tomas’ father died when the Japanese sank his boat off the Singaporean coast, his mother married an Englishman, Kenneth Stoppard, and the family moved to the United Kingdom. Tomas Straussler became Tom Stoppard.

Stoppard, who briefly worked as a journalist before his success in theatre, had a wide oevre. Alongside his many plays, he wrote radio dramas, satirical films like Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil,” as well as film adaptations of books, including his 2012 screenplay for “Anna Karenina” and his 1987 adaptation of JG Ballard’s roman-a-clef “Empire of the Sun.”

The playwright wrote in a 2024 essay published by the Huntington Theatre company that while he was born a Czech Jew, his life in Britain and his English stepfather had turned him into an “honorary Englishman.”

“I knew I was – used to be Czech, but I didn’t feel Czech,” Stoppard wrote. “I felt about as English as you could get.”

Later in life, Stoppard began to explore his personal history through his work. His most recent play, “Leopoldstadt,” traces a Jewish family in Vienna from the 1890s through World War II, obliquely referencing his family’s story.

“It’s been at the back of my mind,” Stoppard said of his family history in a 2022 interview. “It’s something I’ve never used. It felt like unfinished business.”

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