Hampton on Hampton

'A lot of my plays begin as comedies and mutate in the course of the evening, because my instinct is that you have to welcome the audience in and make sure they're sitting comfortably before you can give them an adequate punch on the jaw.'

Since the acclaimed London première of his first play in 1966, Christopher Hampton has established himself as one of Britain's most prominent, and least predictable, dramatists.

From his best-known play, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and its Oscar-winning film version, Dangerous Liaisons, to personal and critical favourites like Total Eclipse and Tales from Hollywood; from his films as writer-director (Carrington, Imagining Argentina) to his work as screenwriter-for-hire (Mary Reilly, The Quiet American); from translations (Art) to musicals (Sunset Boulevard), Hampton eloquently - and entertainingly - explores his varied career with interviewer Alistair Owen, and discusses its recurring theme: the clash of liberal and radical thought, exemplified by his most recent play, The Talking Cure, about the fathers of psychoanalysis, Jung and Freud.

Christopher Hampton was born in the Azores in 1946. He wrote his first play, When Did You Last See My Mother?, at the age of eighteen. Since then, his plays have included The Philanthropist, Savages, Tales from Hollywood, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, White Chameleon, The Talking Cure, Appomattox and A German Life. Appomattox was turned into an opera by Philip Glass in 2014. He has translated plays by Ibsen, Molière, von Horváth, Chekhov and Yasmina Reza (including Art and Life x 3). He has translated seven plays by Florian Zeller, including The Father and The Son, both of which he subsequently co-wrote for the screen with Florian Zeller, winning an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Father in 2021. Musicals include Rebecca, Stephen Ward, Sunset Boulevard and The Third Man. His television work includes adaptations of The History Man, Hôtel du Lac and The Singapore Grip. His screenplays include The Honorary Consul, The Good Father, Dangerous Liaisons, Mary Reilly, Total Eclipse, The Quiet American, Atonement, Cheri, A Dangerous Method, Ali & Nino, Carrington, The Secret Agent and Imagining Argentina, the last three of which he also directed. Alistair Owen is the author of Smoking in Bed: Conversations with Bruce Robinson (one of David Hare's Books of the Year in the Guardian), Story and Character: Interviews with British Screenwriters, Hampton on Hampton (one of Craig Raine's Books of the Year in the Observer), The Art of Screen Adaptation: Top Writers Reveal Their Craft and The Mirror and the Road: Conversations with William Boyd. He has written original and adapted screenplays and stage plays; contributed interviews and reviews to Creative Screenwriting and the Independent on Sunday; and his first novel, The Vetting Officer, is available on Kindle. He has also chaired Q&A events at venues and festivals across the UK, and his platform with Christopher Hampton in the Lyttelton Theatre to celebrate Faber's 75th anniversary was published in the anthology Faber Playwrights at the National Theatre. Alistair Owen is the author of Smoking in Bed: Conversations with Bruce Robinson (one of David Hare's Books of the Year in the Guardian), Story and Character: Interviews with British Screenwriters, Hampton on Hampton (one of Craig Raine's Books of the Year in the Observer), The Art of Screen Adaptation: Top Writers Reveal Their Craft and The Mirror and the Road: Conversations with William Boyd. He has written original and adapted screenplays and stage plays; contributed interviews and reviews to Creative Screenwriting and the Independent on Sunday; and his first novel, The Vetting Officer, is available on Kindle. He has also chaired Q&A events at venues and festivals across the UK, and his platform with Christopher Hampton in the Lyttelton Theatre to celebrate Faber's 75th anniversary was published in the anthology Faber Playwrights at the National Theatre.