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Everything you need to know about Sir Tom Stoppard
Jared Story

Sir Tom Stoppard, originally Tomás Straussler, was born July 3, 1937, in Zlín, Czechoslovakia.

In 1939 he and his family fled the Second World War and moved to Singapore. With the threat of Japanese invasion looming, young Tomás, his mother and his brother fled to Darjeeling, India. His father, Eugene, stayed behind and was killed.

His mother managed a Bata shoe store (Eugene was a doctor employed by Bata) before meeting Maj. Kenneth Stoppard, a British soldier on R&R. The two married, and in late 1945 they all moved to England.

Stoppard quit school at age 17 and worked as a journalist for the Western Daily Press and the Bristol Evening World. He became interested in the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and befriended some young actors, including Peter O’Toole. Not long after, Stoppard began writing TV and radio plays.

In 1966 he landed his first big hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The play was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and made big waves, eventually moving to Broadway and earning Stoppard a Tony Award for best play in 1968.

Many successful plays followed, including 1974’s Travesties and 1982’s The Real Thing, both of which earned him best play Tony Awards. The New York production of his trilogy, The Coast of Utopia, is earning rave reviews, and Rock ’n’ Roll, a play about the political dangers of performing rock music in Czechoslovakia in the ’60s, is a hot ticket in London.

Not just a master of the stage, Stoppard has also found success on the silver screen. Brazil, co-authored with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1985, and in 1999 Stoppard took home an Oscar, sharing the best screenplay award with Marc Norman for Shakespeare in Love.

Also a script doctor, Stoppard has worked on some big Hollywood productions, including an uncredited contribution to Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. According to imdb.com Stoppard has signed on to pen the fourth instalment of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series.

Stoppard was knighted in 1997 and currently resides in London.

For further info on Stoppard and the StoppardFest visit www.stoppardfest.com.