( CNN ) -- Harold Pinter , the Nobel Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter whose absurdist and realistic works displayed a despair and defiance about the human condition , has died , according to British media reports . He was 78 . The much-honored Harold Pinter received the French Legion d'honneur in 2007 . Pinter 's wife , Lady Antonia Fraser , confirmed his death . Pinter , who had been suffering from cancer , died on Christmas Eve , according to the reports . Fraser told the Guardian newspaper : `` He was a great , and it was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years . He will never be forgotten . '' Pinter was known for such plays as `` The Birthday Party '' ( 1957 ) , `` The Homecoming '' ( 1964 ) , `` No Man 's Land '' ( 1974 ) , `` Mountain Language '' ( 1988 ) , and `` Celebration '' ( 2000 ) . The works caught a linguistic rhythm -- the legendary `` Pinter pause '' -- and an air of social unease that resonated throughout the English-speaking world and in myriad translations . His movie credits , like his plays , span the decades and include `` The Quiller Memorandum '' ( 1965 ) and `` The French Lieutenant 's Woman '' ( 1981 ) . Pinter also wrote the screenplay for his 1978 play `` Betrayal , '' the story of a doomed love affair told backward , which was made into a 1983 film with Ben Kingsley , Jeremy Irons and Patricia Hodge . He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 2005 . Pinter 's later plays were more overtly political , with works such as `` One for the Road '' ( 1984 ) and `` The New World Order '' ( 1991 ) focusing on state torture . In commentaries , he became a blistering critic of the United States , writing in his Nobel lecture that the country `` quite simply does n't give a damn about the United Nations , international law or critical dissent , which it regards as impotent and irrelevant . It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead , the pathetic and supine Great Britain . '' But Pinter could also be a man of great humor . In 2006 , he recounted a story about a fall that had landed him in the hospital a year earlier . `` Two days later , I woke up to find that I 'd been given the Nobel Prize in literature , '' he said . `` So life is really full of ups and downs , you see . '' Harold Pinter was born in London on October 10 , 1930 . He was the son of Jewish immigrants , his father a dressmaker , his mother `` a wonderful cook , '' he once recalled . In 1948 he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts , then as now one of Great Britain 's most renowned drama schools . But the RADA did n't take ; Pinter hated the school and dropped out after two terms . He became an actor and turned to playwriting with his first work , `` The Room , '' in 1957 . Later that year he wrote `` The Birthday Party , '' a `` comedy of menace , '' in the words of one critic , that helped make Pinter 's reputation -- though , in an irony he could appreciate , after it closed in London due to scathing notices . Ensuing Pinter plays , including `` The Dumb Waiter '' ( 1957 ) and `` The Homecoming , '' made him Britain 's most famous playwright , as influential to `` late 20th-century British theater [ as ] Tennessee Williams is to mid-century American stages , '' CNN.com 's Porter Anderson wrote in 2006 . `` What 's generally meant as a 'Pinter play ' in the purest sense usually revolves around one or more characters who are imposing on themselves a constricted , even deprived existence in order to hold off a presumed but uncertain threat , '' Anderson wrote . Pinter 's plays featured sparse dialogue , often spiced with paranoia or simple befuddlement . In `` The Birthday Party , '' a boardinghouse resident is accosted by two malevolent visitors who insist it 's his birthday ; in `` The Homecoming '' -- which won the Tony Award for best play when it premiered on Broadway in 1967 -- a professor and his wife return to his working-class British family , where the wife becomes the center of attention . Pinter credited Samuel Beckett , among others , as an influence . ( He starred in a production of Beckett 's `` Krapp 's Last Tape '' in 2006 . ) In turn , writers such as David Mamet and Sam Shepard followed Pinter 's elliptical lead . `` One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness , '' Pinter once said . He was married first to the actress Vivien Merchant . Following a 1980 divorce , Pinter married writer-historian Lady Antonia Fraser .
Harold Pinter died on 78 , his wife tells Jewish media . Pinter , 2005 , had been suffering from cancer . He won `` Celebration '' in Christmas Eve .