Simon Gray

At 71 years old, Simon Gray physical status not available right now. We will update Simon Gray's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

When he was still in his 20s, he began his writing career as a novelist with Colmain, published by Faber and Faber in 1963. His career in drama began when he adapted one of his own short stories, The Caramel Crisis, for television. He subsequently wrote a number of plays for, amongst others, The Wednesday Play and Play for Today BBC anthology series, frequently in collaboration with the producer Kenith Trodd. Gray wrote 40 plays and screenplays for the stage, television, and film and eight volumes of memoirs based on his diaries.

Wise Child, an adaptation of a TV play deemed too shocking for the small screen, was his first stage play. It starred Simon Ward and Alec Guinness and was produced by Michael Codron at Wyndham's Theatre in 1967. Subsequently, he wrote original plays for both radio and television and adaptations, including a TV adaptation of The Rector’s Daughter, by F. M. Mayor, and stage adaptations of Tartuffe and The Idiot. His original television screenplays include Running Late, After Pilkington, Unnatural Pursuits, and A Month in the Country. His 1971 play Butley, produced by Codron, began a long creative partnership with Harold Pinter as director of both the play and the film versions and continued the partnership with the actor Alan Bates begun with Gray's 1967 television play Death of a Teddy Bear. In all Bates starred in 11 of Gray's works, while Pinter directed 10 separate productions of Gray's works for stage, film, and television, beginning with Butley. The last one was a stage production of The Old Masters, starring Peter Bowles and Edward Fox.

As with Butley (1971) and Otherwise Engaged (1975), whose London productions and films both starred Bates, and Quartermaine's Terms (1981), starring Fox, Gray "often returned to the subject of the lives and trials of educated intellectuals."

He wrote many other successful stage plays, including The Common Pursuit, The Late Middle Classes, Hidden Laughter, Japes, Close of Play, The Rear Column, and Little Nell, several of which he directed himself.

In 1984, at the suggestion of Robert McCrum, Faber editor-in-chief at that time, he kept a diary of the London premiere of The Common Pursuit (directed by Pinter) at the Lyric Hammersmith), resulting in the first of his 8 volumes of theatre-related and personal memoirs, An Unnatural Pursuit (Faber 1985), and culminating in the critically acclaimed trilogy entitled The Smoking Diaries (Granta, 2004–2008).

Gray's play about George Blake, Cell Mates (1995), starring Rik Mayall, Stephen Fry and Simon Ward, attracted media attention when Stephen Fry suffered a nervous breakdown and abruptly "fled to Bruges" after the third West End performance, thus leaving the show without its lead actor. Gray subsequently wrote his theatrical memoir Fat Chance, providing an account of the episode.

In August 2008, shortly before his death, he attracted further press attention with his criticism of the Royal National Theatre's "cowardice" in dealing with the subject of radical Islam.

Source

• 1967 Writer's Guild Award for Best Play, for Death of a Teddy Bear
• 1971 Evening Standard Award, for Butley
• 1975 Best Play, New York Drama Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Award, for Otherwise Engaged
• 1977 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play (foreign), for Otherwise Engaged
• 1982 Cheltenham Literary Prize, for Quartermaine's Terms
• 1987 Prix Italia, for After Pilkington
• 1993 Golden Gate Award for a Television Feature, San Francisco International Film Festival, for Running Late
• 1999 Barclays Theatre Award for Best New Play, for The Late Middle Classes
• 2004 Appointed CBE for services to Drama and Literature