Shaffer, Anthony Joshua

▪ 2002

      British playwright and screenwriter (b. May 15, 1926, Liverpool, Eng.—d. Nov. 6, 2001, London, Eng.), delighted audiences with his ingenious comic thriller Sleuth, which played 2,359 performances in London's West End and more than 2,000 performances on Broadway, where it won the Tony Award for best play of 1970. He went on to write the screenplay for the 1972 Oscar-nominated film version. Shaffer devised several additional plays, notably Murderer (1975). He had far greater success, however, with his many other screenplays, including Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), The Wicker Man (1973), Sommersby (1993), and three Agatha Christie adaptations, Death on the Nile (1978), Evil Under the Sun (1983), and Appointment with Death (1988). Shaffer also wrote novels in collaboration with his twin brother, Sir Peter Shaffer, playwright of Five Finger Exercise, Equus, Royal Hunt of the Sun, and Amadeus.

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