Tom Stoppard, widely considered one of the greatest playwrights of his generation, has died at 88, the Guardian reports.

Stoppard was born in Zlín, Czechoslovakia; following the Nazi invasion of the country in 1939, he and his family moved to Singapore, then India and England. He worked as a journalist and wrote his first stage play, A Walk on the Water, when he was in his early 20s.

He broke through in 1967 after his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which had been staged the previous year in Edinburgh, Scotland, premiered at the Old Vic in London. Stoppard would later direct a 1990 film version of the play, starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth.

Stoppard won acclaim for other plays, including Jumpers, Arcadia, Rock ’n’ Roll, and Leopoldstadt, as well as the screenplays for Brazil, Shakespeare in Love, and Anna Karenina. He was also the author of a novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon. In 2020, he was honored by PEN America with the PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award.

Stoppard’s admirers paid tribute to him on social media. On the platform X, Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger wrote, “Tom Stoppard was my favourite playwright. He leaves us with a majestic body of intellectual and amusing work. I will always miss him.”

And theater critic Ben Brantley posted, “Farewell to Tom Stoppard, who as a playwright made words dance, explode, soar to the heavens and acknowledge their own limitations as they did so. And always glowing within the cerebral fireworks was a questing, rueful, empathic wonder. He took us to Arcadia and Utopia and back.”

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.