Christopher Hampton CBE

19 October 10

BAFTA/Jay Brooks

Hampton’s career enjoyed an auspicious start when his debut play, When Did You Last See Your Mother? (1966), made him the youngest playwright ever to have a play in the West End, a record which still stands.

His television work includes adaptations of his own plays The Philanthropist (1975), Savages (1975), and other works including Hotel du Lac (1986) and The Ginger Tree (1989). He also wrote Able’s Will (1977), which marked his first screen collaboration with Stephen Frears.

After early film screenplays including A Doll’s House (1973) and The Honorary Consul (1983), Hampton reunited with Frears for perhaps his best-known work to date: Dangerous Liaisons (1988). The tale of bored aristocrats indulging in games of passion and betrayal brought both BAFTA and Oscar success to Hampton, who enjoyed two further collaborations with Frears on Mary Reilly (1996) and Cheri (2009).

His second BAFTA nomination came for Carrington (1995), a script which he both wrote and directed. The biographical drama about the relationship between painter Dora Carrington and author Lytton Strachey earned Hampton a BAFTA nomination for British Film and won him the Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

Hampton’s masterly adaptation of Ian Mcewan’s novel Atonement (2007), in which a young girl’s lie has life-changing effects, brought two more BAFTA nominations for Adapted Screenplay and British Film, and his second Oscar nomination.

His latest script, A Dangerous Method (2011), is directed by David Cronenberg, and stars Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen.

More from Christopher Hampton CBE

• Watch Christopher Hampton's Screenwriting Lecture
• Find out more about his favourite script

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