Acclaimed Shakespearean actor Antony Sher dies at 72
LONDON » Antony Sher, one of the most acclaimed Shakespearean actors of his generation, has died aged 72, the Royal Shakespeare Company said Friday.
Sher had been diagnosed with terminal cancer earlier this year. His husband, Royal Shakespeare Company Artistic Director Gregory Doran, took leave from his job to care for him.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1949, Sher moved to Britain in the late 1960s to study drama. He joined the RSC in 1982 and had a breakthrough role in 1984 as the usurping king in “Richard III.”
He went on to play most of Shakespeare’s meaty male roles, including Falstaff in the “Henry IV” plays, Leontes in “The Winter’s Tale,” Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Iago in “Othello” and the title characters in “Macbeth” and “King Lear.”
Non-Shakespearean roles for the company, based in the Bard’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, included Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” and the title role in Moliere’s “Tartuffe.”
Sher also performed with Liverpool’s innovative Everyman Theatre and at many of London’s main theaters, getting his first West End starring role as a drag artist in Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy.” He won the 1985 bestactor Olivier Award jointly for “Torch Song Trilogy” and “Richard III.”
He gained a second Olivier, as well as a Tony Award nomination for playing artist Stanley Spencer in Pam Gems’ “Stanley” at the National Theatre and on Broadway.
After winning acclaim as a pillar of British theater, Sher began to explore both his Jewish and his South African heritage.
He adapted Primo Levi’s powerful Auschwitz memoir “If This is a Man” into a one-man stage show, “Primo,” that ran on Broadway in 2005.
He created the solo show despite being afflicted with debilitating stage fright.
“If you suffer from stage fright, is it a good idea to perform a one-man show? The answer, surprisingly, turns out to be yes,” Sher told the Associated Press in 2005. “It is the best cure for stage fright in the world, because it’s make or break. There’s no middle ground.”
Sher’s last role for the RSC came in 2019 in South African writer John Kani’s “Kunene and The King.” Sher played a veteran actor diagnosed with cancer, looked after by a Black South African carer.