Antony Sher

Sir Antony Sher (14 June 1949 – 2 December 2021) was a British actor, writer, and theatre director born in Cape Town, South Africa. He became a British citizen in 1979 and was a two-time Laurence Olivier Award winner and five-time nominee. His Broadway appearances spanned 1997 to 2005, and he received a Theatre World Award in 1997 and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance in 2006.

Sher grew up in the Cape Town suburb of Sea Point, where he attended Sea Point High School. His father, Emmanuel Sher, worked in business, and his mother was Margery, née Abramowitz. He was a first cousin once removed of the playwright Sir Ronald Harwood. After relocating to the United Kingdom in 1968, Sher auditioned unsuccessfully at the Central School of Speech and Drama and RADA before enrolling at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where he studied from 1969 to 1971. He subsequently completed a postgraduate course run jointly by Manchester University Drama Department and the Manchester School of Theatre.

In the 1970s, Sher worked at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre alongside writers Alan Bleasdale and Willy Russell and fellow actors Trevor Eve, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Pryce, and Julie Walters. He also performed with the theatre group Gay Sweatshop before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982. His early RSC work included playing the Fool in King Lear and the title role in Molière's Tartuffe. His major breakthrough came in 1984 when he played the title role in Richard III, earning his first Laurence Olivier Award. He went on to lead RSC productions of Tamburlaine, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Macbeth, and in 2014 played Falstaff in both parts of Henry IV in Stratford-upon-Avon and on national tour. He also played Johnnie in Athol Fugard's Hello and Goodbye, Iago in Othello, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. In 2015, he played Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, and from 2016 to 2018 he performed the title role in King Lear, making him the only person to have played both the Fool and King Lear at the RSC.

Sher's Broadway career included his appearance in Stanley, in which he portrayed the painter Stanley Spencer, a role that also earned him his second Laurence Olivier Award in 1997. He later starred in Primo on Broadway, a production drawn from his own 2004 play, which was subsequently adapted as a film in 2005. That performance brought him the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance in 2006.

Beyond his stage work, Sher wrote the plays I.D. (2003) and Primo (2004), and in 2005 directed Breakfast With Mugabe at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. In 2008, his play The Giant, the first of his stage works in which he did not perform, was presented at the Hampstead Theatre. His books included the memoirs Year of the King (1985), Beside Myself (2002), Primo Time (2005), and Year of the Fat Knight (2015), as well as Woza Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus in South Africa (1997, co-written with Gregory Doran). He also published several novels, among them Middlepost (1989), Cheap Lives (1995), The Indoor Boy (1996), and The Feast (1999). His 2018 book Year of the Mad King won the 2019 Theatre Book Prize from the Society for Theatre Research.

In 2001, Sher played the composer Gustav Mahler in his cousin Ronald Harwood's play Mahler's Conversion, about Mahler's decision to renounce his Jewish faith before his 1897 appointment as conductor and artistic director of the Vienna State Opera House. Sher connected the role to his own experience of concealing multiple aspects of his identity — his Jewish heritage, his South African origins, and his sexuality — after arriving in England. In 2019, he returned to Stratford-upon-Avon to perform in Kunene and the King alongside John Kani.

His film credits included Yanks (1979), Superman II (1980), Shadey (1985), Erik the Viking (1989), the 1996 adaptation of The Wind in the Willows in which he played the Chief Weasel, and the 1997 film Mrs Brown, in which he portrayed Benjamin Disraeli. He was cast as Thráin II in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, appearing in the film's Extended Edition. Television work included the miniseries The History Man (1981), Hornblower (1999), The Jury (2002), the BBC Four film Home (2003), God on Trial (2008), and The Shadow Line (2011). In 2007, he made a crime documentary for Channel 4 titled Murder Most Foul, examining the murders of actor Brett Goldin and fashion designer Richard Bloom in South Africa.

Sher and theatre director Gregory Doran, his frequent professional collaborator, entered into a civil partnership in 2005 and married on 30 December 2015. On 10 September 2021, it was announced that Sher was terminally ill with cancer. He died at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon on 2 December 2021, aged 72.