Christopher Hampton CBE (born January 26, 1946) is an Academy Award winning British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film Dangerous Liaisons (1988).
Hampton was born to British parents in Faial, Azores and as a child, lived in Aden, Egypt and Zanzibar. At the age of 13, he went to the independent boarding school Lancing College, where he won house colours for boxing and distinguished himself as a sergeant in the CCF. In 1964 he went to New College, Oxford, as Sacher Scholar, to study German and French and graduated with a First Class Degree in 1968.
He became involved in theatre at Oxford University and moved on to become the youngest writer ever to have a play performed in the West End in 1966. From 1968-70 he worked as the Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre in London.
Hampton won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1988 for the screen adaptation of his play Dangerous Liaisons. He was nominated again in 2007 for adapting Ian McEwan's novel Atonement.
