Biographie

Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005.

He allegedly declined a British knighthood in 1996.

In the early 1960s, he had an extra-marital affair with broadcaster Joan Bakewell. Later, Pinter went on to write what became the movie Trahisons conjugales (1983), which told the story of their affair.

He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1996 (1995 season) for the Special Award for his lifetime achievement to the theatre.

Has a father-son relationship with producer Sam Spiegel, according to Spiegel biographer Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni. Spiegel was quite taken with Pinter's genius, so much so it hurt the film adaptation of Le Dernier Nabab (1976), wrote "Tycoon" director Elia Kazan in his own autobiography, as Spiegel treated the screenplay as sacrosanct and wouldn't let Kazan change it to create more dramatic tension. Ironically, when Spiegel had first seen a screenplay written by Pinter in the 1960s (The Servant (1963), he had been appalled by its lack of professionalism.

America is at this moment developing advanced systems of "weapons of mass destruction" and is prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has more of them than the rest of the world put together. It has walked away from international agreements on biological and chemical weapons, refusing to allow inspection of its own factories. The hypocrisy behind its public declarations and its own actions is almost a joke. America believes that the 3,000 deaths in New York are the only deaths that count, the only deaths that matter. They are American deaths. Other deaths are unreal, abstract, of no consequence. The 3,000 deaths in Afghanistan are never referred to. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead through American and British sanctions which have deprived them of essential medicines are never referred to. The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to. Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high. Babies are born with no brain, no eyes, no genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths or rectums, all that issues from these orifices is blood.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading

• as a last resort, all other justifications having failed to justify

themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

What concerns me most is shape and structure.

I'll tell you something, and this is true: I've never been able to write a film which I didn't respect, I just can't do it. I'm very happy about all the films I haven't done.

But, let's face it, the fact remains that Hollywood has always been an extraordinary bloody place. Always. Hollywood, mainly, is a kind of shithouse. But out of this shithouse, they've produced the most surprising films.