Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter CH CBE (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. Pinter was Jewish.eNotes He was born and raised in Hackney, east London.

His plays include: The Birthday Party, The Homecoming and Betrayal, all of which he adapted into movies. His adaptations of others' works include: The Servant, The Go-Between, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Trial and Sleuth.

The critic Irving Wardle called Pinter's early plays "comedies of menace". He meant that the plays begin with an apparently innocent situation. The situation becomes both threatening and "absurd" as Pinter's characters behave in strange ways. Pinter acknowledged that Samuel Beckett influenced his early work. They became friends, sending each other drafts of their works in progress for comments.

Pinter was married to Vivien Merchant from 1956 until they divorced in 1980. He was married to Antonia Fraser from 1980 until his death. He was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2001 and died from the disease in London seven years later when it metastasised to his liver.

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Category:1930 births
Category:2008 deaths
Category:Actors from London
Category:BAFTA Award winners
Category:British anti–Iraq War activists
Category:English movie actors
Category:British Nobel Prize winners 
Category:English playwrights
Category:English television actors
Category:English television writers
Category:Cancer deaths in London
Category:Deaths from esophageal cancer
Category:Jewish British actors
Category:Jewish British writers
Category:Jewish Nobel Prize winners
Category:Movie directors from London
Category:People from Hackney
Category:Screenwriters from London
Category:Nobel Prize in Literature winners