"It's a terrific... you can't put it down. So I phoned him back and I said I'd love to do it. I went over to Paris for a meeting, and we just talked very generally about the approach." -- Ronald Harwood
Sir Ronald Harwood, CBE (born 9 November 1934) is an author, playwright and screenwriter. He is most noted 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).
"Easier to climb up, than to just hang on.""He's very concealed, Polanski. We became very close friends, but I don't think I ever saw him drop his guard. I didn't see him upset or anything like that, we just did the work.""I mean he's a very famous director... they're not going to put their... and he's very tough, he doesn't like interference at all, so he kept them at bay.""I went straight in. Fade in, one... whatever. He's playing the piano in the radio station.""No, I can't write treatments, I think there's a danger with treatments. That you... you write out your first excitement and enthusiasm in a prose treatment.""Well we took it apart scene by scene. We examined every sentence, every full stop, every comma. He has a most wonderful eye for detail, Roman, and you know, he's a very good artist."
Harwood was born Ronald Horwitz in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of Isobel (née Pepper) and Isaac Horwitz. Harwood moved from Cape Town to London in 1951 to pursue a career in the theatre. He changed his name from Horwitz 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 would later draw 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 Wolfit company. he joined the 59 Theatre Company for a season at the Lyric Hammersmith.
In 1960, Harwood began a career as a writer and published his first novel, All the Same Shadows in 1961, the screenplay, Private Potter in 1962, and the produced stage play, March Hares in 1964. Harwood continued at a prolific pace penning 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 (notably The Dresser).
One of the recurring themes in Harwood's work is his fascination for the stage, its performing artists and artisans as displayed in the The Dresser, his plays, 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 has a strong interest in World War II, as shown by the films Operation Daybreak, The Statement, The Pianist, and his play turned to film Taking Sides. Based on true stories, the two last films feature musicians as their main characters. His 2008 play An English Tragedy is based on the true story of 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 Prevert Du Scenario, 2008, for Best Adaptation. In 2008. Harwood was awarded the Humanitas Award in recognition of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Harwood was president of the English PEN Club from 1989 to 1993, and of International PEN from 1993 to 1997. He was Chairman of the Royal Society of Literature (2001 to 2004) and is President of the Royal Literary Fund (2005). He was made Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1974, Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (1996) and Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1999. In 2003 he was elected a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Department of Language and Literature. He was made Doctor of Letters, Keele University (2002), Doctor Honoris Causa, National Academy for Theatre & Film Arts, Sofia (2007), Honorary Fellow, Central School of Speech and Drama (2007) and Honorary Fellow, University of Chichester (2009). Harwood was knighted in the 2010 Birthday Honours. He has been the Chairman of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford since 2008.
Harwood was born Ronald Horwitz on November 9, 1934 in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of Isaac Horwitz and Isobel Pepper. He attended the Seapoint Boys’ High School there. He moved to England in 1951. In 1959, he married Natasha Riehle. The actor Sir Antony Sher is his cousin. On the 12th of June 2010, he received a knighthood for services to theatre.
