Biography

When Stoppard's family (then named "Straussler") fled Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis, they stopped identifying as Jews. Stoppard was still a young child when this happened, and by the end of the war, his father had died and his mother had remarried to a British man named Kenneth Stoppard, who gave Tom his last name and insisted that the family's former Judaism be kept secret. Tom was only given very vague information concerning his family's Judaism until he was far into his adulthood, when he discovered that all four of his grandparents were Jewish and prisoners at Terezin (Theresienstadt) Concentration Camp, where they were murdered by the Nazis. When he became more interested in exploring his Jewish roots, his stepfather asked (in 1996) that he stop using the name "Stoppard" because he didn't want his name to be associated with a Jew. Tom responded that this was an impractical request, since by that time he was almost 60 years old and had been living, writing, and winning theater and literary awards under the name "Tom Stoppard" for a very long time.

He worked as script doctor and re-write uncredited on: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Sleepy Hollow (1999), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), and others.

Admirer of Margaret Thatcher.

He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1978 Queen's Honours List and awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 1997 Queen's Honours List for his services to drama.

Sons, with TV doctor Miriam Stoppard, producer Will Stoppard and actor Ed Stoppard.

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Actors are the opposite of people.

If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.

Life is a gamble at terrible odds. If it were a bet, you would not take it.