Peter Shaffer 1990. "Lettice and Lovage" also enabled Margaret Tyzack to win the award for best featured actress, and the production was nominated for best direction of a play, at the 1990 Tony Awards. Several of Shaffer's plays have been adapted to film, including "Five Finger Exercise" (1962), "The Royal Hunt of the Sun" (1969), "The Public Eye" (1962), from which he adapted the 1972 film "Follow Me!" (1972), "Equus" (1977), and "Amadeus" (1984), which won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture. Shaffer received two Academy Award nominations for adapting his plays "Equus" and "Amadeus" for the big screen. For writing the
Equus (play) on 11 September 1976. It then opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre on 5 October 1976, ending on 2 October 1977, for a total of 1,209 performances. Shaffer adapted the play for a 1977 film starring Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Eileen Atkins, Colin Blakely, Joan Plowright, and Jenny Agutter, directed by Sidney Lumet. Unlike stage productions, where the horses are portrayed by human actors, often muscular men wearing tribal-style masks, Lumet did not believe this could adequately be done in a film version, concluding a degree of realism was required, "because the reality he [Alan] was being watched in was