Tom Stoppard, award-winning dramatist, dies at 88

The legendary playwright Tom Stoppard has died at the age of 88, his agents have announced.

The Czech-born British dramatist and screenwriter, whose output led to the Oxford English Dictionary-accredited adjective “Stoppardian,” held the record for the most Tony wins for Best Play, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, The Real Thing, The Coast of Utopia, and Leopoldstadt. The Coast of Utopia also holds the record for most Tonys ever received by a play.

“Stoppardian” refers to work that engages with philosophical concepts in a witty, ironic, and linguistically intricate manner, often incorporating multiple timelines and visual humour. You can see these hallmarks throughout several of his works that didn’t win a Tony but were formidable contenders nonetheless – Jumpers, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, and Rock ’n’ Roll, among others. His characters are erudite and literate, navigating adult dilemmas through sharp intellect and playful language.

Unsurprisingly, his writing process was just as complex and inspiring as his plays. “When I was young, I used to think one had to know all about the play that you’re writing,” he told our sibling website TheaterMania in 2023. “For quite a few years now, I’ve understood something, which is that it can be a bad thing to know too much about where your play is going. I always write from page one to the last page, as it were, in page order. I don’t dip in and out of the play at different points, normally. But the essential answer to your question is that you don’t really understand what you’re getting into. You just get into it.”

As a screenwriter, Stoppard won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, and also penned Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. He was also a well-known and non-credited script doctor, contributing to a wide range and variety of films, including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Schindler’s List, Hook, Chaplin, Sleepy Hollow, and, reportedly, two movies involving lovable dogs: 102 Dalmatians and Beethoven.

Born Tomas Straussler in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, his family fled to Singapore two years later to escape the Nazis. When Singapore was invaded by Japan several years later, he fled with his mother and brother to Australia and India. His father, who stayed behind, was killed. The family moved to England after the war when his mother married British major Kenneth Stoppard, and the young Strassuler adopted his stepfather’s surname. Before his career as a playwright began, he was a journalist and drama critic.

It was his early days, and his late-in-life realisation that his family was Jewish, that led to the creation of Leopoldstadt, his final-produced play in the West End and on Broadway (all four of his grandparents died in concentration camps). “For a long time, I’ve described myself as having a charmed life,” he told TheaterMania in 2023, “and after a while, it began to seem that, as the young man who represents me towards the end of the play is told, it’s almost as though he was forgetting his own history, and I began to think I should try to write about this.”

Stoppard was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997. Survivors include third wife Sabrina Guinness, whom he married in 1997, and four sons, including the actor Ed Stoppard.

Even after a whole life in theatre, there were still mysteries, like acting. “I’m terribly impressed by the actors, but at the same time, I have very high and constant expectations of them to, in the end, come up with just the right kind of performance,” he noted. “I don’t feel surprised; that’s the job. I think that means I underappreciate them, but I hope that I express my real feelings, which is mostly love.”

Producer Sonia Friedman said in a statement: “Today we say goodbye to the world’s greatest playwright. But I am also saying goodbye to my great friend and long term collaborator, and the kindest and wisest person I have ever known.

I’m absolutely devastated, but also feeling profoundly lucky to have had him in my life. Tom transformed the landscape of theatre and literature, yet what stayed with you most was his quiet decency. He made you feel special, valued, entirely worth his time; an extraordinary gift from someone whose mind could illuminate the world.

He was always there for me. Through chaos, doubt, triumph, fear, Tom was steady, funny, wise, and unfailingly present; simply there, exactly when I needed him. He loved his friends with a gentle constancy, and we all adored and cherished him. We all knew we were standing beside greatness, but he never carried himself like a man who knew it. He wore his brilliance lightly.”