Oscar Winner Tom Stoppard Dead at 88

Oscar-winning playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard has died. He was 88.

According to his agents, the writer “died peacefully at home in Dorset, [England,] surrounded by his family” on Saturday.

Stoppard has written several very famous stage shows, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, The Real Thing, The Coast of Utopia, and Leopoldstadt, all of which won a Tony Award for Best Play.

He was also a prolific screenwriter and was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning one for the screenplay of the 1998 period drama Shakespeare in Love.

Born in 1937 in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard’s family was forced to flee due to the country’s impending occupation by the Nazis. They eventually settled in England, where Stoppard became a journalist and, eventually, a playwright.

Stoppard was honored by King Charles III and Queen Camila, who said they were “deeply saddened” by his passing and called him “one of our greatest writers” in a statement.

“A dear friend who wore his genius lightly, he could, and did, turn his pen to any subject, challenging, moving and inspiring his audiences, borne from his own personal history,” the two wrote. “We send our most heartfelt sympathy to his beloved family. Let us all take comfort in his immortal line: ‘Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.’”