Biography for
Christopher Hampton (I) More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

26 January 1946, Faial, Açores, Portugal

Birth Name

Christopher James Hampton

Spouse

Laura d Holesch'

(1971 - present) 2 children

Trivia

He was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honors List for his services to literature.

An Associate Member of RADA.

In 1995, won two Tony Awards for "Sunset Boulevard:" as Best Book (Musical) with Don Black, and as Best Original Musical Score, sharing lyrics credit with Black and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. He previously has received two Tony nominations as author of Best Play nominees: in 1971 for "The Philanthropist" and in 1987 for "Les Liaisons Dangereuses."

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990

Ranked #43 in the 2008 Telegraph's list "the 100 most powerful people in British culture".

His play, "The Philanthropist", was awarded the 1975 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Play Production with Swoosie Kurtz, Brian Murray, Peter Wexler (scenic designer), at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.

Personal Quotes

At my school I would say that it was more of a sort of romantic thing than an actual sexual thing, but people did have crushes on other boys. It was sort of staring at people in chapel. Interestingly enough, the people at school who did become gay were not the people who were involved in that kind of thing. What went on most of the time was people fell for boys who looked like girls and were a bit younger" - on adolescent homosexuality in his school

The first screening was the press screening. The producer and I went in and checked out the print - absolutely fine - went out to dinner and I then had a call saying 'I'm sorry to tell you it's been booed'. I said, 'How awful'. 'Don't worry, it often happens at Venice, nothing to worry about'. And then the next night was the proper opening where there was a six-minute standing ovation so I thought, 'Oh, that's all right'. - on Imagining Argentina (2003)'s reception

"It's interesting that it chimed with the high point of Thatcherism. That was fortuitous because I first thought about it. When you see it now the resonance is slightly different. It seems now to be to do with everyone else's sex life. When I was re-looking at it in rehearsal I thought, 'This is rather odd, it seems no longer to be about institutionalized selfishness. The thing about "Liaisons" is that by identifying certain things that were going on at the time and pushing them to their logical extreme in a kind of mathematical way, Laclos just laid everything bare. It has been said it is the best sex education a boy could have. It is very wise about what buttons people push and how one's vanity is all tied up with a question of sex." - on Dangerous Liaisons (1988).

I never imagined early on that it would last. David Hare and I used to sit around gloomily at the Royal Court and tell each other we had ten years and we had got to make the best of them. - on expectations for his writing career

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films. Don't do masterpieces, because they'll be disappointing. I don't think that. If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.