R.I.P. David Seidler, Oscar-winning screenwriter of The King’s Speech

David Seidler—screenwriter for The King’s Speech, The King And I, Queen Of Spades, and more—died Saturday on a fly fishing excursion in New Zealand. The news was confirmed by his manager, Jeff Aghassi (via Variety), who said in a statement that “David was in the place he loved most in the world—New Zealand—doing what gave him the greatest peace which was fly-fishing. If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.” Seidler was 86.

Born in London in 1937, Seidler developed his own speech impediment—similar to the one he would later write about—while traveling to America on a ship with his family to escape the war. It was actually his stutter that inspired him to become a writer in the first place. “If you’re born with two conflicting traits—in my case, I was a born ham, but I was a stutterer—and if you want to be the center of attention but you can’t talk, you find another channel, and that’s writing,” he said in a 2011 interview (via CBS News).

George VI was a childhood hero of Seidler’s, who watched the stammering king master his own speech impediment live on television during his wartime addresses. This admiration would later inspire his script for The King’s Speech, which won him an Oscar in 2011. The 2010 film, directed by Tom Hooper and starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham Carter, also won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (for Firth) that year, and went on to become a successful West End stage play—also written by Seidler—in 2012.

Seidler also wrote a number of TV movies including Malice In Wonderland (1985), Onassis: The Richest Man In The World (1988), and My Father, My Son (1988) before landing his first feature-writing job for Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker: The Man And His Dream (along with Arnold Schulman) in 1988. He also shares a number of writing credits with Jacqueline Feather, including Time To Say Goodbye? (1997), Quest For Camelot (1998), The King And I (1999), and more.

“If I am stuck with this stutter, you all are stuck with listening to me,” Seidler remembered saying to himself to help with his own stutter as a child (via CBS News). “I am a human being, and I’m going to talk, and you’re going to have to F-word listen.”

Seidler is survived by his children, Marc and Maya.