Tom Stoppard

Writer

July 3, 1937 (88 years)

† November 29, 2025

Zlín, Czechoslovakia

Biography

Sir Tom Stoppard OM CBE FRSL Hon FBA (born Tomáš Sträussler, 3 July 1937 — 29 November 2025) was a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covered the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard had been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his…

Filmography

7.0

Playhouse

A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.

7.0

ITV Playhouse

ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.

4.2

Thirty-Minute Theatre

An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.

7.0

BBC2 Play of the Week

An anthology of plays and novels adapted into feature length TV movies, broadcast on BBC2 from September 1977 to April 1979.

7.7

Brazil

Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

7.5

Empire of the Sun

Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

6.7

Anna Karenina

In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

6.4

Parade's End

The story of a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat, his mean socialite wife and a young suffragette in the midst of World War I and a Europe on the brink of profound change.

6.8

Shakespeare in Love

Young William Shakespeare is forced to stage his latest comedy, 'Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter', before it's even written. When lovely noblewoman Viola de Lesseps auditions for a role, they fall into forbidden love — and Shakespeare's play finds a new life (and title). As their relationship intensifies, the comedy soon transforms into tragedy.

5.8

Billy Bathgate

In the year 1935, a teen named Billy Bathgate finds first love while becoming the protégé of fledgling gangster Dutch Schultz.

6.5

Tulip Fever

An artist falls for a married young woman while he's commissioned to paint her portrait. The two invest in the risky tulip market in hopes to build a future together.

6.3

Enigma

The story of the WWII project to crack the code behind the Enigma machine, used by the Germans to encrypt messages sent to their submarines.

6.1

The Russia House

Barley Scott Blair, a Lisbon-based editor of Russian literature who unexpectedly begins working for British intelligence, is commissioned to investigate the purposes of Dante, a dissident scientist trapped in the decaying Soviet Union that is crumbling under the new open-minded policies.

6.9

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, minor characters from the play 'Hamlet', find themselves on the road to Elsinore Castle at the behest of the King of Denmark. The duo encounter a band of players before arriving to find that they are needed to try to discern what troubles the prince Hamlet. Meanwhile, they ponder the meaning of their existence.

5.8

The Human Factor

When a leak of information in the African section of British Intelligence is discovered, a security man is brought in to investigate.

5.5

Poodle Springs

Private eye Philip Marlowe and his bride move to a desert town, where he uncovers a land scheme.

5.4

The Romantic Englishwoman

A marriage crisis between a writer and his wife leads her to flee to Germany and eventually return with another man, through whom the writer is going to overcome his writer's block.

6.5

Despair

Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.

7.2

The Fifteen Minute Hamlet

Shakespeare films Hamlet on a single reel then, after an initial screening, edits it down to the bare bones.

6.3

National Theatre Live: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Against the backdrop of Hamlet, two hapless minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, take centre stage. As the young double act stumble their way in and out of the action of Shakespeare’s iconic drama, they become increasingly out of their depth as their version of the story unfolds.