The award-winning author David Seidler died in New Zealand while fly fishing at the age of 87.
The Oscar winner is best known for writing the script for “The King’s Speech.”
David’s death was not explained.
Today, the Hollywood writer’s longtime manager Jeff Aghassi told Deadline, “David was in New Zealand, doing what gave him the most peace: fly-fishing.”
“If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”
David wrote both the play and the movie versions of The King’s Speech, which was a huge hit at the box office.
It won four Oscars in 2011: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing.
NOT FAR FROM THE HEART
King George VI, played by 63-year-old actor Colin Firth, had a severe stutter, which was the focus of the movie The King’s Speech.
As a child, David also had a stammer, and he has said that it inspired him to write about the British monarch and tell his story.
David won an Oscar for his screenplay, as well as two BAFTAs and the Humanitas Prize.
There were always plans for The King’s Speech to be both a movie and a play.
As he took the stage to accept his Oscar, he dedicated it to “all the stutterers around the world.”
He also praised “Her Majesty The Queen for not putting me in the Tower for using the F word.”
Colin played King George VI in the movie, and in his acceptance speech, he joked that the movie’s release marked the “peak” of his career.
He continued by thanking “everyone who has been rooting for me back home,” including his wife “Livia” for putting up with my “fleeting delusions of royalty.”
Also winning was Tom Hooper, who directed “The King’s Speech.”
WITH THE QUEEN’S OKAY
David started his work on The King’s Speech in 1981 when he learned that the Queen Mother hired an Australian speech and language therapist named Logue to help her son.
Logue worked in London in the 1920s, so the Queen Mother hired him to help George VI, who was affectionately known as “Bertie,” with his public speaking.
The King would freeze up every time he was asked to speak because he stutters.
David told the DailyMail in 2010 how he would ask the royal family for permission to make the movie.
A letter was sent to her asking for permission to make a movie about the story. He said, “But it was still so raw for her to have to go through again what her husband and her family went through with the abdication and him becoming king.”
“It was too much and still painful, so she wrote and asked that the film not be made until after her death.”
He didn’t start the work until 2003, even though the Queen Mother had died in 2002.
ADOLESCENCE OF DAVID
David was born in July 1937 in London, England, into a wealthy family.
During WWII, the Seidlers’ apartment was bombed, so they had to move to Lingfield in Surrey and then to the United States.
A sister ship was sunk by German U-boats while they were traveling across the Atlantic Ocean.
David first got his stammer while he was on board, before he turned three years old.