Tom Stoppard, the Oscar-winning writer behind Shakespeare in Lovedied 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 his home in Dorset, surrounded by his family,” the agency said.
The statement remembered him for “his wit, his irreverence, 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 marked by war and loss. His family fled to Singapore during World War II.
After eventually moving to England, he left school as a teenager and took up writing. He once joked that as a young student, “If I had been hit by a bus at that time, I would have been one of the most ignorant corpses in the world.” »
Stoppard became known with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are deadand has won numerous awards for his plays and screenplays.
His biggest on-screen success came with the 1998 romantic drama. Shakespeare in Lovewhich won him the Oscar for best original screenplay.
Speaking about the film in 1998, he explained that writing about Shakespeare involved using “a lot of space to make up”, adding that some of the story was “pure mischief”.
Throughout his career he has worked on film scripts, including Brazil, Empire of the Sun And Anna Kareninawhile his plays have continued to receive critical acclaim in recent years.
Stoppard has described his writing process as almost instinctive, saying in 2019 that “all the good elements are unconscious”.
He hoped his work would endure 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.
