Tom Stoppard

After bursting onto the London theater scene in the late 1960s, Tom Stoppard's absurdist masterpiece "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," Stoppard established himself as a linguistic gymnast with farces like "Travesties" (1974) prior to addressing more serious concerns in such plays as "Night and Day' (1978). The playwright soon made a name for himself adapting literary works to film with projects like novelist Graham Greene's "The Human Factor" (1979). Eventually moving on to original script work, Stoppard collaborated on Terry Gilliam's cult classic "Brazil" (1985) and even provided uncredited work on director Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989). He received high marks with his directorial debut for the film version of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" (1990) and 25 years after his first stage hit, proved he was still a vibrant voice in the theater with the intellectual drama "Arcadia" (1993). Director John Madden's "Shakespeare in Love" (1998) earned him both mainstream success and an Academy Award. The recently knighted Sir Stoppard later penned a screen version of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" (2012) for an ambitious undertaking starring Keira Knightly in the title role. Defying easy categorization, Stoppard constantly pushed himself as an artist even as he enjoyed the fruits of his more commercial labors.