British playwright Ronald Harwood, who won the Oscar for best adaptation for writing the screenplay
for Roman Polanski's
The Pianist
in 2003, died on September 8 at the age of 85 in England.
His agent Judy Daish said the causes of death were natural.
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In a short statement, she added: “
His wife Natasha passed away in 2013. Today the disappearance of Sir Ronald leaves their children Antony, Deborah and Alexandra in grief.
"
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Born in South Africa on November 9, 1934, Ronald Harwood was considered one of the great British playwrights of the second half of the 20th century.
Queen Elizabeth had knighted him in 2010.
After spending the first seventeen years of his life in South Africa, where he was born, Ronald Harwood left for London to take drama lessons at the Royal Academy.
The theater is his passion.
He was then accepted to the prestigious Shakespeare Company, directed by Donald Wolfit, a very famous director in England.
In the autobiographical-inspired play,
The Dresser
(
The Dresser
) Ronald Harwood will pay homage to the teaching of Wolfit whom he considered to be his master.
After these years of apprenticeship, Harwood began to write his first plays in 1960. A writer with an overflowing imagination, he also wrote novels and essays on art and artists.
His biography
After the Lions
, devoted to the great Sarah Bernhardt, is a classic of the genre.
But it was in the art of adapting works for cinema that he acquired an immense international reputation.
Fascinated by history and particularly by the tragedy of World War II, he wrote
Seven Men at Dawn
for Lewis Gilbert based on an Alan Burgess novel but also
Crime Against Humanity
for Norman Jewison, based on the work by Brian Moore.
The Oscar in 2003, which crowned his work as a goldsmith on the screenplay for the film
The Pianist,
did not make his head spin.
In 2018, in an interview devoted to his work, he said with humility: “
I don't think about my artistic heritage, it's pretentious.
I would simply like that after my death we continue to play my pieces.
»
The Pianist
(
The Pianist
) directed by Roman Polanski, scripted by Ronald Harwood, in 2002. The film will receive the Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, seven Césars and three Oscars in 2003. With, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann. ..