Ronald Harwood

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Ronald Harwood , CBE (born November 9, 1934 in Cape Town , Union of South Africa ; † September 8, 2020 in Sussex , England ) was a British screenwriter , film producer and stage actor as well as the author of dramas, novels and non-fiction.

Live and act

Harwood was born in South Africa to Jewish immigrants Isaac Horwitz and Isobel Pepper and moved to London at the age of 17 to become a stage actor. After attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art , he became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company on the recommendation of Sir Donald Wolfit .

Between 1953 and 1958, Wolfit's personal assistant, Harwood was able to acquire a great deal of personal knowledge in this way. He also wrote a biography after Wolfit's death (1968) entitled: Sir Donald Wolfit CBE: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theater . He also processed his experiences with Wolfit and his troupe in the stage play The Cloakroom , which was filmed in 1983 under the title An Unequal Couple with Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay and for which Harwood also contributed the script .

He had already embarked on this career as a screenwriter in 1962 and over the years worked on numerous films that achieved international success.

Harwood has often dealt mainly with issues relating to the Second World War . In 2001 he wrote the biography of Wilhelm Furtwängler , Taking Sides , directed by István Szabó . He also wrote the screenplay for Being Julia for István Szabó . This film was released in 2004.

The most famous film Harwood, however, was the 2002 produced Holocaust -Drama The Pianist , which the lives of Wladyslaw Szpilman tells the Adrien Brody embodies. Harwood himself received the gold trophy for this work at the 2003 Academy Awards . Another drama, again directed by Roman Polański , was the literary film adaptation of Oliver Twist , made in 2005 .

Another of his projects was the Mike Newell film Love in the Times of Cholera, based on Gabriel García Márquez in 2007. Together with Baz Luhrmann , Harwood also revised the script for his epic Australia , which premiered in November 2008.

His play Kollaboration had its German premiere in 2009: Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig are cooperating on the opera Die Schweigsame Frau , which is due to come out in Dresden in 1935. Strauss, President of the National Socialist Reich Chamber of Music , collaborated with the Nazis, but showed courage in this "artistic" case and ensured that the name of the Jew Zweig was printed on the program slips.

Harwood died in Sussex on September 8, 2020. He left three children.

Varia

His cousin, the actor Antony Sher , also moved to London from South Africa.

Literary works and plays

Harwood has written over twenty plays, a number of novels and non-fiction.

Filmography

Awards (selection)

literature

  • W. Sydney Robinson: Ronald Harwood: "speak well of me": the authorized biography , London: Oberon Books, 2017, ISBN 978-1-78682-043-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ronald Harwood: Oscar winner died at the age of 85. September 9, 2020, accessed September 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ film reference
  3. ^ German by Max Faber
  4. ↑ Ronald Harwood: Oscar winner died at the age of 85. September 9, 2020, accessed September 9, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Harwood, Ronald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British screenwriter, film producer, stage actor, writer and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Cape Town , South African Union
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 2020
Place of death Sussex , England