Profession: actor

Often regarded as second only to Shakespeare, Molière remains one of the greats of European literature, known particularly for a series of comedies that puncture bourgeois pretension. He collaborated several times with Lully (eventually falling out), with Charpentier, and with his longstanding colleague Corneille. Molière, his close contemporary La Fontaine, and the younger Boileau (both friend and supporter) and Racine, were celebrated as the so-called Quartet of the rue du Vieux Colombier. Having premiered Racine’s first play, Molière’s relations with him went disastrously wrong. He died following an onstage haemorrhage while playing the hypochondriac in his own Le Malade imaginaire.

Pinter is generally recognised as the most influential post-war English dramatist, writing to disturb, not to please. Beckett became both friend and mentor, a role Pinter later played for Mamet. Always politicised, he went to Turkey with his friend Miller to investigate the torture of writers, read a defiant lecture of Rushdie’s, and joined Chomsky in berating US foreign policy. He wrote screenplays for Kazan, Schrader, Reisz and (especially – their collaboration was described as ‘perfect’) Losey. Osborne, Mamet and Stoppard were frequent correspondents as well as friends. Pinter underestimated the demands of portraiture, Freud’s painting abandoned after two sittings.