King’s favourite actor Antony Sher leaves £2.3m in his will
SIR Antony Sher, who was one of King Charles’s favourite actors, left nearly £2.3million in his will.
The Olivier Award-winning stage star – famed for his roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company – had cancer and died aged 72 last December.
Probate records reveal that he left the bulk of his estate of £2,289,033 including his share in his house in Islington, North London, to his husband, Shakespearean director Greg Doran.
The couple tied the knot on December 21, 2005 – the first day that same-sex couples could legally form a civil partnership in the UK – and married ten years later in 2015.
South African-born Sir Antony’s will also left £15,000 to his sister-in-law in Cape Town and gifts totalling £25,000 to two other friends.
He won an Olivier award in 1985 for his leading role as Richard III and his performance as a drag queen in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy.
He won another Olivier in 1997 for his role in Stanley, a play about the artist Stanley Spencer, and was nominated for a prize for performances in King Lear and The Winter’s Tale, in 1983 and 2000.
Sir Antony also had roles in films such as Shakespeare In Love and Mrs Brown, and played Adolf Hitler in Churchill: The Hollywood Years in 2004. Asked by a child to name his favourite actor during a tour of India in 2017, King Charles picked Sir Antony, although he added: ‘There are lots of others, though.’
The King, who is president of the Royal Shakespeare Company, paid tribute to the actor after his death, calling him ‘a giant of the stage at the height of his genius’. He added: ‘I had the great joy and privilege of knowing him for many years, and admired him enormously for the consummate skill and passion he brought to every role.’
Dame Judi Dench, who starred with him in the 1997 film Mrs Brown, described his performance as Benjamin Disraeli as ‘spectacular’.