Oscar Winner David Seidler, Known for the King’s Speech Dies Aged 86

David Seidler, best known for his Oscar-winning writing on the King’s Speech has died aged 86.

According to his manager, Jeff Aghassi, the London-born screenwriter passed away on Saturday, while he was fly-fishing in New Zealand. However, the cause of his death was not revealed. Aghassi said “David was in the place he loved the most in the world – New Zealand- doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly fishing. If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.”

Seidler was a British-American playwright as well as film and television writer. He won the Academy Award and a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay for King’s Speech. Born in 1937, Seidler moved to the US in the early days of World War II and the London Blitz. Later in the war, his family resettled in America. During their voyage to America, Seidler developed a stammer, before his third birthday.

While accepting his Oscar in 2011, he dedicated the award to “all the stutterers throughout the world.” He said “we have a voice, we have been heard, thanks to you, the Academy.”

Throughout his career, Seidler wrote a number of projects, including the animated children’s musicals The King and I, Quest for Camelot and Madeline: Lost in Paris. He also wrote My Father, My Son; Soraya; Son of the Dragon and Queen of Spades.

Seidler won his first Writers Guild Award for the 1988 biopic Onassis: The Richest Man In The World. He also co-wrote Francis Ford Coppola’s 1988 comedy drama Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

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