Stoppard made his reputation for intellectual wit with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," which was first performed in 1966. He spun wordplay, philosophical debates and scientific principles into popular theatrical entertainment, landing a string of West End and Broadway hits, and won a best-screenplay Oscar for the smash Hollywood film "Shakespeare in Love."
The adjective "Stoppardian" entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1978 to describe writing marked by "elegant wit while addressing philosophical concerns."
"The subject matter of the play exists before the story and it is always something abstract," Stoppard told the Paris Review in 1988. "I get interested by a notion of some kind and see that it has dramatic possibilities."
He won five Tony Awards for best play and two Laurence Olivier Awards for best new play.
Stoppard was born Tomáš Sträussler to a Jewish family in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, on July 3, 1937. The Sträusslers fled to Singapore when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939.
But they couldn't escape war. In 1942, the Japanese advanced on Singapore. Stoppard would always remember hiding under a table as a young child while bombs were falling there, according to Hermione Lee's 2021 biography, "Tom Stoppard: A Life."
Stoppard's father, a doctor, joined the British Army and died when his ship was bombed. Stoppard's mother fled to India, where her two sons attended an American school in Darjeeling.
Then she married British Army Major Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the family a new surname and moved them to England in 1946. Stoppard's mother, eager to adopt a new English identity, buried the family history. She never told her sons that they were Jewish.
Stoppard attended boarding schools in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, but found lessons dull. Eager to work, he decided to forgo university.
At 17 he became a journalist, first at the Western Daily Press in Bristol, then at the Bristol Evening World, and his work included theater reviews. He became a fan and friend of a young Peter O'Toole, then in repertory at the Bristol Old Vic, and grew enamored with the theater world.
Stoppard then moved to London where he tried his own luck as a playwright. His breakthrough came with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." It was first performed at the 1966 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and got a professional staging at London's National Theatre in 1967. The show transferred to Broadway in 1968 and won Stoppard his first Tony Award for best play.
In the play, two minor characters from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" bumble about, confused about their role in the prince's drama, and wander into existential discussions about the search for meaning. During the early days of the Broadway run, a theatergoer complained the play was incomprehensible and asked, "What's it about?" Stoppard replied, "It's about to make me very rich," according to Lee's biography.
Then came the metatheatrical comedy "The Real Inspector Hound" (1968) and the satire of academic philosophy "Jumpers" (1972). Stoppard divorced his first wife, Jose Ingle, in 1972.
In "Travesties" (1974), author James Joyce befriends Dada founder Tristan Tzara and Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and all three share a stage in 1917. It won Stoppard his second Tony for best play.
His 1982 play "The Real Thing" netted Stoppard his third Tony for best play and marked a turning point toward more personal, emotional writing. It was about a successful married playwright who has an affair with an actress performing in his own play.
Stoppard maintained that it wasn't autobiographical at the time he wrote it -- though later it became public that he had had an affair with Felicity Kendal, who had starred in a few of his plays. At the time, Stoppard was married to Miriam Stern, a well-known doctor. They divorced in 1992 after a 20-year marriage.
The 1993 play, "Arcadia," is one of his most critically acclaimed works. Set on a country estate, it toggles between the Regency Era and the present and weaves together physics, history and a whodunnit involving the poet Lord Byron. It won Stoppard his first Olivier Award for best new play.
In 2002, his nine-hour trilogy "The Coast of Utopia" came to theaters, bringing three plays on three consecutive nights: "Voyage," "Shipwreck and "Salvage." The shows include meandering political and philosophical debates, set against the messy domestic lives of a group of 19th-century Russian intellectuals. It won Stoppard his fourth best-play Tony.
Stoppard had a parallel career in Hollywood. He co-wrote the cult 1985 dystopian fantasy "Brazil," which scored him his first Academy Award nomination. He adapted the novel "Empire of the Sun" into Steven Spielberg's 1987 film.
Stoppard also worked as an uncredited "script doctor" on many films including "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," "Schindler's List" and "102 Dalmatians." While tweaking the script for "The Bourne Ultimatum," he killed off Bourne, according to Lee's biography. That story line didn't stick for the 2007 film.
His involvement in the 1998 sensation "Shakespeare in Love" started with an uncredited rewrite of Marc Norman's script about a love affair that inspired the writing of "Romeo and Juliet." But his role swelled to a credited co-billing. The script circulated around Hollywood for a few years, then was bought by now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
After the film's first screening, Weinstein demanded it be rewritten and reshot with a happy ending -- but Stoppard fought to keep his denouement of "love lost, inspiration gained." Through it all, Stoppard said he remained ignorant of the alleged goings-on that would later lead the film's star, Gwyneth Paltrow, to join several other women in accusing Weinstein of sexual misconduct, according to Lee's biography.
The film won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best screenplay. It also scored Stoppard a Golden Globe Award for best screenplay.
Stoppard was a celebrity and social creature. Beginning with his 60th birthday, in 1997, he threw a large party every two years in London's Chelsea Physic Garden. It became a legendary, star-studded event. Guests included Mick Jagger, Princess Margaret, Paul Simon, Stephen Fry, Harrison Ford and Keith Richards. The 2013 affair had 800 guests and a total bill of £118,000 (about $180,000 at the time), according to Lee's biography. Stoppard married television producer Sabrina Guinness in 2014.
Stoppard learned of his own family history in 1993. A Czech cousin visited and revealed that Stoppard was Jewish, and that all of his grandparents and three of his aunts had died in the Holocaust, according to Lee's biography.
The haunting discovery inspired Stoppard to write a multigenerational Jewish family epic that ends with an English-raised boy who doesn't even know he's Jewish. "Leopoldstadt" premiered in London's West End in 2020 when Stoppard was 82.
The play follows a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna from 1899 to 1955 as the rise of Nazism destroys their place in society. It won Stoppard his second Olivier Award for best new play, and his fifth Tony for best play.
Stoppard said he still wasn't done writing. "I'd like to get back to my desk and write another play," he told PBS NewsHour in 2022.
Stoppard was known for elevating intellectual theater in the public consciousness and marrying intellectual depth and dramatic entertainment. "The only modern playwright to present the same kind of challenges as Shakespeare is Stoppard," actor Antony Sher told the Independent in 2015.
He reaped great commercial rewards with cutting-edge highbrow material -- yet sometimes felt his audience couldn't keep up. He was derided as a snob when he suggested, in a few statements over the years, that he had to dumb down his work for uncultured audiences.
Queen Elizabeth II knighted Stoppard in 1997 and awarded him the Order of Merit in 2000 for his services to drama.
Stoppard is survived by his wife, Sabrina Guinness, and four sons.