Tom Stoppard, the Oscar-winning writer behind Shakespeare in lovehas died at the age of 88.
His talent agency, United Agents, confirmed the news in a statement shared on Saturday, saying he died peacefully at his home in Dorset, England.
“We are deeply saddened to announce that our beloved client and friend, Tom Stoppard, has passed away peacefully at home in Dorset, surrounded by his family,” the agency said.
The statement remembered him for “his wit, his reverence, his generosity of spirit and his deep love of the English language.”
Born in 1937 in what is now the Czech Republic, Stoppard survived a childhood shaped by war and loss. His family fled to Singapore during World War II.
Eventually moving to England, he left school in his teens and threw himself into writing. He once joked that as a young student, “If I had been run over by a bus back then, I would have been one of the most ignorant corpses around.”
Stoppard stepped forward with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are deadand went on to win numerous awards for his plays and screenwriting.
His biggest screen success came with the 1998 romantic drama Shakespeare in lovewhich won him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Speaking about the film in 1998, he shared that writing about Shakespeare meant using “lots of room for invention,” adding that some of the story was “pure mischief.”
Across his career, he worked on film scripts, e.g Brazil, Empire of the Sun and Anna Kareninawhile his plays continued to garner critical acclaim well into recent years.
Describing his writing process as almost instinctive, Stoppard said in 2019 that “all the good stuff is subconscious.”
He hoped his work would live on for generations. “I aspire to write for posterity,” he once said. “I like the idea of them being part of the furniture.”
Tom Stoppard is survived by his wife and children.
