Tom Stoppard, the acclaimed British playwright and Oscar-winning writer of Shakespeare in Love, has died. He won a record five Tony Awards for best play, including for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Leopoldstadt.
Videos by Suggest
United Agents announced on Saturday that Stoppard passed away peacefully at his home in Dorset, England, surrounded by family.
A cause of death wasn’t disclosed. Stoppard was 88.
“He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language,” the statement reads, per the Associated Press. “It was an honor to work with Tom and to know him.”
“Tom Stoppard was my favourite playwright,” Rolling Stones legend Mick Jagger wrote on X. “He leaves us with a majestic body of intellectual and amusing work. I will always miss him.”
Tom Stoppard was my favourite playwright. He leaves us with a majestic body of intellectual and amusing work. I will always miss him. pic.twitter.com/c9c2Y3ohZn
— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) November 29, 2025
Stoppard was born on July 3, 1937, in what was then Zlín, Czechoslovakia. His Jewish family fled the Nazi occupation, and he attended boarding school in the Indian Himalayas before settling in the UK after World War II. There, Stoppard began his career as a theater critic and playwright.
Tom Stoppard’s Signature Play Debuted in 1966
After writing short radio plays in the 1950s, Stoppard wrote his first stage play, A Walk on the Water (later retitled Enter a Free Man), in 1960. It premiered in Hamburg, Germany, in 1963. His career took off in 1966 with the debut of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Edinburgh Festival.
According to IMDb, Stoppard’s screenwriting credits include Hollywood films like Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (2005).
His film credits also include the dystopian comedy Brazil (1985) by Terry Gilliam, the Elizabethan rom-com Shakespeare in Love (1998)—which earned him and Marc Norman an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay—the code-breaking thriller Enigma (2001), and the Russian epic Anna Karenina (2012).
Meanwhile, he was married three times. His marriages to Josie Ingle, a nurse, and Miriam Stern, a TV journalist, ended in divorce. In 2014, he married producer Sabrina Guinness. Stoppard is survived by his four sons: Oliver, Barnaby, Will and Ed.