Christopher Hampton biography
(portions excerpted from The Tower of Critics
interview by Malcolm Lawrence)
CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON
was born in the Azores in 1946 and lived in Aden, Egypt and Zanzibar as
a child. In 1966 he went to New College, Oxford to study German and French
and graduated with a First Class Honours Degree.
He became involved in theatre at Oxford University and moved on to become
the youngest writer ever to have a play performed in the West End in 1966.
He continued to write for the theatre throughout the 1970s with such plays
as Total Papa Villone Eclipse, The Philanthropist, Savages with Paul
Scofield and Tom Conti, and Treats (all at the Royal
Court), as well as a number of translations of
such classics as Uncle Vanya, Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House and Moliere's
Don Juan.
During the 1980s, his stage writing was also combined
with television work. For the theatre, he penned Tales From Hollywood
in 1982, Tartuffe for the Royal Shakespeare Company Barbican in 1983
and, most notably, in 1985 he adapted the Choderlos de Laclos novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses for
the RSC which ran for nearly 2000 performances in the West End. His most
recent theatre work was the stage adaptation of Sunset Boulevard
for Andrew Lloyd Webber, which has thus far been produced in London, Los
Angeles, on Broadway and will open in October 1995 in Toronto. He won a
Tony Award this year for Best Book of a Musical for Sunset Boulevard.
Mr. Hampton's television screenplays include The History Man for
the BBC, a television adaptation of Tartuffe and Hotel Du Lac
in 1986, which won a BAFTA Award for Best Single Television Drama, as well
as The Ginger Tree and Tales From Hollywood for the BBC in
1989. A separate production ofTales From Hollywood also aired to
great acclaim on the PBS American Playhouse Series in 1993.
His film work includes A Doll's House in 1973, starring Claire Bloom
and Tales From the Vienna Woods, directed by Maximillian Schell in
1979. In 1984, he completed The Honorary Consul, based on a Graham
Greene novel, starring Michael Caine and Richard Gere, followed in 1986
by The Good Father, based on a novel by Peter Prince. In 1988 he
won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (from his own play) for
Dangerous Liaisons, directed by Stephen Frears and starring John
Malkovich, Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer. He also won a BAFTA Award
for Best Screenplay.
His screenplay adaptation of his play Total Eclipse about the lives
of French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine, directed by Agnieszka Holland with
Leonardo Di Caprio and David Thewlis in the leads, opens in early November.
His screenplay adaptation of Mary Reilly, based on the Valerie Martin
novel about Dr. Jekyll's housemaid, directed by Steven Frears and starring
Julia Roberts and John Malkovich, opens in December of 1995. Mr. Hampton
recently reprised the role of screenwriter/director on The Secret Agent.
Based on the Joseph Conrad short story, the film stars Gerard Depardieu,
Bob Hoskins and Patricia Arquette and was shot on location in London. His
next project, as he explains in the interview, is to film the W. Somerset
Maugham novel, The Moon & Sixpence, a fictionalized account of
the life of Gauguin.
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