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Ronald Harwood AI simulator
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Ronald Harwood AI simulator
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Ronald Harwood
Sir Ronald Harwood CBE FRSL (né Horwitz; 9 November 1934 – 8 September 2020) was a South African-born British author, playwright, and screenwriter, best known for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser (for which he was nominated for an Oscar) and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).
Harwood was born Ronald Horwitz in Cape Town, in what was then the Union of South Africa, the son of Isobel (née Pepper) and Isaac Horwitz. After attending Sea Point High School, Harwood moved from Cape Town to London in 1951 to pursue a career in the theatre. He changed his surname from Horwitz to Harwood after an English master told him it was too foreign and too Jewish for a stage actor.
After training for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he joined the Shakespeare Company of Sir Donald Wolfit. From 1953 to 1958, Harwood was Sir Donald's personal dresser. He later drew on this experience when he wrote the stage play The Dresser and the biography Sir Donald Wolfit CBE: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre. In 1959, after leaving the Donald Wolfit Company, Harwood joined the 59 Theatre Company for a season at the Lyric Hammersmith, during which he played the role of Pablo both in the stage debut of Alun Owen's play The Rough and Ready Lot and in its 1959 television adaptation.
In 1960 Harwood began a career as a writer. He published his first novel, All the Same Shadows, in 1961, the screenplay for Private Potter (1962) from his television drama, and the stage play March Hares in 1964. Harwood continued at a prolific pace, writing more than 21 stage plays and 10 books. He also created more than 16 screen plays, but seldom wrote original material directly for the screen, usually acting as an adapter, sometimes of his own work, as with The Dresser.
One of the recurring themes in Harwood's work is his fascination with the stage, its performing artists and artisans, as displayed in The Dresser, After the Lions (about Sarah Bernhardt), Another Time (a semi-autobiographical piece about a gifted South African pianist), Quartet (about ageing opera singers), and his non-fiction book All the World's a Stage, a general history of theatre.
Harwood also had a strong interest in the Nazi period, especially the situation of individuals who either voluntarily collaborated with the Nazis or, alternatively, faced strong pressure to do so and had, in each case, to work out their own personal combination of resistance, deception and compromise. His work focusing on this period includes the films Operation Daybreak (covering the assassination by the Czechoslovakian Resistance of the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich), The Statement (a fictionalized account of the post-War life on the run of the French collaborator Paul Touvier), The Pianist (an adaptation of the autobiography of the Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman covering his survival during the Nazi occupation of Poland), the play later adapted to film Taking Sides (focused on the post-War "de-Nazification" investigation of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler), the play Collaboration (about the composer Richard Strauss and his partnership with the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig), and the play An English Tragedy (dealing with the British fascist John Amery).
Harwood also wrote the screenplay for the films The Browning Version (1994) with Albert Finney, Being Julia (2004) with Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons, and Roman Polanski's version of Oliver Twist (2005) with Ben Kingsley.
He won an Academy Award for the script of The Pianist, having already been nominated for The Dresser in 1983. Harwood received his third Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2007 for his adaptation of the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which he also won a BAFTA and the Prix Jacques Prévert du Scénario in 2008, for Best Adaptation. In 2008 Harwood was also given the Humanitas Award in recognition of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Ronald Harwood
Sir Ronald Harwood CBE FRSL (né Horwitz; 9 November 1934 – 8 September 2020) was a South African-born British author, playwright, and screenwriter, best known for his plays for the British stage as well as the screenplays for The Dresser (for which he was nominated for an Oscar) and The Pianist, for which he won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).
Harwood was born Ronald Horwitz in Cape Town, in what was then the Union of South Africa, the son of Isobel (née Pepper) and Isaac Horwitz. After attending Sea Point High School, Harwood moved from Cape Town to London in 1951 to pursue a career in the theatre. He changed his surname from Horwitz to Harwood after an English master told him it was too foreign and too Jewish for a stage actor.
After training for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he joined the Shakespeare Company of Sir Donald Wolfit. From 1953 to 1958, Harwood was Sir Donald's personal dresser. He later drew on this experience when he wrote the stage play The Dresser and the biography Sir Donald Wolfit CBE: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre. In 1959, after leaving the Donald Wolfit Company, Harwood joined the 59 Theatre Company for a season at the Lyric Hammersmith, during which he played the role of Pablo both in the stage debut of Alun Owen's play The Rough and Ready Lot and in its 1959 television adaptation.
In 1960 Harwood began a career as a writer. He published his first novel, All the Same Shadows, in 1961, the screenplay for Private Potter (1962) from his television drama, and the stage play March Hares in 1964. Harwood continued at a prolific pace, writing more than 21 stage plays and 10 books. He also created more than 16 screen plays, but seldom wrote original material directly for the screen, usually acting as an adapter, sometimes of his own work, as with The Dresser.
One of the recurring themes in Harwood's work is his fascination with the stage, its performing artists and artisans, as displayed in The Dresser, After the Lions (about Sarah Bernhardt), Another Time (a semi-autobiographical piece about a gifted South African pianist), Quartet (about ageing opera singers), and his non-fiction book All the World's a Stage, a general history of theatre.
Harwood also had a strong interest in the Nazi period, especially the situation of individuals who either voluntarily collaborated with the Nazis or, alternatively, faced strong pressure to do so and had, in each case, to work out their own personal combination of resistance, deception and compromise. His work focusing on this period includes the films Operation Daybreak (covering the assassination by the Czechoslovakian Resistance of the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich), The Statement (a fictionalized account of the post-War life on the run of the French collaborator Paul Touvier), The Pianist (an adaptation of the autobiography of the Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman covering his survival during the Nazi occupation of Poland), the play later adapted to film Taking Sides (focused on the post-War "de-Nazification" investigation of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler), the play Collaboration (about the composer Richard Strauss and his partnership with the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig), and the play An English Tragedy (dealing with the British fascist John Amery).
Harwood also wrote the screenplay for the films The Browning Version (1994) with Albert Finney, Being Julia (2004) with Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons, and Roman Polanski's version of Oliver Twist (2005) with Ben Kingsley.
He won an Academy Award for the script of The Pianist, having already been nominated for The Dresser in 1983. Harwood received his third Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2007 for his adaptation of the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which he also won a BAFTA and the Prix Jacques Prévert du Scénario in 2008, for Best Adaptation. In 2008 Harwood was also given the Humanitas Award in recognition of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.