Tom Stoppard

Who is Tom Stoppard?

Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, CBE, FRSL is a Czech-born British playwright, 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 political freedom pervade his work along with exploration of linguistics and philosophy. Stoppard has been a key playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation.

In 1939, Stoppard left Czechoslovakia as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright. He has been married twice, to Josie Ingle and Miriam Stoppard, and has two sons from each marriage, one of whom is actor Ed Stoppard.

Famous Quotes:

• I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion.
• Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
• It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.
• I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
• Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
• The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
• Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.
• The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
• Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
• Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it.