Playwright Pinter Dead at 78

Harold Pinter, the lauded Nobel Prize-winning British playwright, died Wednesday of cancer.

Pinter wrote 29 plays over the course of his career, some of his most renowned works being "The Caretaker," "The Homecoming" and "Birthday Party." He became known for his dark explorations of the everyday human condition and his use of pregnant pauses, developing an influential style known as "Pinteresque."

Pinter also wrote the screenplays for "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and "Betrayal" (his own play), both of which were nominated for Oscars. He dabbled in acting and directing on the stage, in film and on television.

Pinter was a political activist and harsh critic of the Bush and Blair administrations. Too ill to accept his 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm, he used the occasion to film a scathing attack on American foreign policy that one theater critic said could have been staged by Samuel Beckett.

"It was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years," Pinter's second wife Lady Antonia Fraser said. "He will never be forgotten."