Tom Stoppard to Receive Writers Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award

Five-time Tony winning playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard will be honored with the Writers Guild of America West’s 2013 Laurel Award for Screen, according to Deadline.com. The award, which honors lifetime achievement in outstanding writing for motion pictures, will be presented to the prolific playwright at the Writers Guild Awards' West Coast ceremony on February 17 at the JW Marriott Los Angeles.

“A television writer since 1965 and a screenwriter since 1975, Tom Stoppard brings wit, elegance, and heart to all he composes," WGAW Vice President Howard A. Rodman said in a statement. "We did not want to let his acknowledged brilliance as a playwright to blind us to his dramatic talents in our own field. From The Romantic Englishwoman through Despair, The Human Factor, Brazil, Empire of the Sun, The Russia House, Billy Bathgate, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma, Vatel, and this past year’s Anna Karenina, Stoppard’s screenplays delight, disturb, entrance.” 

As a playwright, Stoppard earned Tony Awards for The Coast of Utopia, The Real Thing and Travesties, and additional nominations for Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Invention of Love and Arcadia. His additional Broadway plays include Jumpers, Artist Descending a Staircase, Night and Day, Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth, Dirty Linen & New-Found-Land and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.