TOM STOPPARD

AGE: 70
OCCUPATION: Playwright, screenwriter, sterling mind
NUMBER OF TIME COVERS: 0
PREVIOUS APPEARANCES ON THE TIME 100: 0

PRO: Writing a nine-hour odyssey about the lives of 19th-century Russian political thinkers is one thing. Making it a hit in New York is quite another. But Stoppard managed to do both, with Coast of Utopia. He also found time to debut a new play, Rock and Roll, which continues his eastward explorations with a headbanging approach to Czechoslovakia's liberation from Soviet rule.

CON: Some critics dismissed Coast as "take your medicine" theater, and symptomatic of theater's elitist ills.