David Hare

David Hare is an English playwright, screenwriter, director, and performer, born on 5 June 1947 in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, Sussex. He was raised in Bexhill-on-Sea, the son of Agnes Cockburn and Clifford Theodore Rippon Hare, a purser in the Merchant Navy. Hare was educated at Lancing College in Sussex and at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature and served on the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club Committee in 1968.

Hare began his professional career working with the Portable Theatre Company between 1968 and 1971. His first play, Slag, was produced in 1970, the same year he married Margaret Matheson, with whom he had three children before their divorce in 1980. He served as Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre in London from 1970 to 1971, and subsequently held the same position at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1973. In 1975, he co-founded the Joint Stock Theatre Company alongside David Aukin and Max Stafford-Clark. He has served as associate director of the National Theatre since 1984.

His play Plenty, produced at the National Theatre in 1978, marked an early major success and later reached Broadway in the 1982–83 season. Hare adapted the work into a 1985 film starring Meryl Streep. In 1982, he founded Greenpoint Films, and his screenwriting credits from that period include Wetherby, Strapless, and Paris by Night. A Map of the World, produced at the Royal National Theatre in 1983 with Bill Nighy, Diana Quick, and Ronald Hines, transferred to The Public Theatre in 1985 with a cast that included Alfre Woodard, Elizabeth McGovern, and Zeljko Ivanek. Also in 1985, Hare co-wrote Pravda with Howard Brenton, a satire on the mid-1980s newspaper industry starring Anthony Hopkins, whose performance earned him a Laurence Olivier Award.

Racing Demon, written in 1990 as the first installment of a trilogy examining British institutions, centers on the Church of England and its engagement with issues including gay ordination and inner-city evangelism. The play debuted at the National Theatre, received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and transferred to Broadway's Vivian Beaumont Theatre in 1995 with a cast that included Paul Giamatti, Denis O'Hare, and Kathleen Chalfant, earning a Tony Award for Best Play nomination. Skylight followed in 1996, originally starring Michael Gambon and Lia Williams and receiving a second Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play before transferring to Broadway in 1997, where it earned another Tony nomination for Best Play. In 1995, Hare also produced a translation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children in London.

Amy's View, written in 1998 and exploring the emotional bond between a mother and daughter, premiered at the Royal National Theatre with Judi Dench, Samantha Bond, and Ronald Pickup. Dench reprised her role in the Broadway transfer, winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1999. That same year, Hare both wrote and performed in Via Dolorosa on Broadway, a solo work for which he received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. His Broadway appearances also include The Blue Room and The Secret Rapture.

My Zinc Bed, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 2001 with Tom Wilkinson, Julia Ormond, and Steven Mackintosh, received an Olivier Award nomination for Best New Play and was later adapted into a television film in 2008. Hare's screenplay for The Hours, released in 2002 and adapted from Michael Cunningham's novel, starred Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman. The script earned him the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, along with nominations for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe in the same category. His 2008 adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader, directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, brought Hare a second set of Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Hare wrote and directed the BBC's Worricker Trilogy — Page Eight (2011), Turks & Caicos (2014), and Salting the Battlefield (2014) — and scripted the BBC television series Collateral (2018) and Roadkill (2020). His 2011 play South Downs, drawn from his own experiences at Lancing College, was well received at the Chichester Festival and adapted as a Saturday Drama on BBC Radio 4. His most recent stage work includes Straight Line Crazy, starring Ralph Fiennes. Among his career honors are two Laurence Olivier Awards, a British Academy Television Award, a Writers Guild of America Award, and three Tony Award nominations, in addition to two Academy Award nominations, two BAFTA nominations, and two Golden Globe nominations.