Peter Shaffer screenplay for "Equus", he was nominated for the 1977 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar but the award went to Alvin Sargent, who wrote the screenplay for "Julia". For writing the screenplay for "Amadeus", Shaffer received both the 1984 Best Screenplay Golden Globe and the 1984 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. Shaffer was homosexual but did not write explicitly about it. His boyfriend Robert Leonard died in 1990. Shaffer died on June 6, 2016, at the age of ninety while on a trip to the south-west of Ireland. He co-wrote three detective novels with his brother Anthony Shaffer under the pseudonym "Peter Antony".
Peter Shaffer Peter Shaffer Sir Peter Levin Shaffer, CBE (; 15 May 1926 – 6 June 2016), was an English playwright and screenwriter. He wrote numerous award-winning plays, of which several were adapted into films. Shaffer was born to a Jewish family in Liverpool, the son of Reka (née Fredman) and Jack Shaffer. He was the identical twin brother of fellow playwright Anthony Shaffer. He was educated at the Hall School, Hampstead, a boys' prep school and St Paul's School, London, an independent school for boys, and subsequently he gained a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study history. Shaffer was a