Antony Sher was a man of many talents, with a royal knighthood, and an abundance of friends. However, she struggled with anxiety crippling her and feelings of inadequateity.
He once wrote that, as he was being introduced to the Queen as one of Britain’s finest classical actors, an inner voice taunted him: ‘I’m just a little gay Yid from the other side of the world. I shouldn’t be here.’
Yet such was his talent, at times he seemed to embody the critics’ dictum about King Lear: Sher was ‘too huge for the stage’.
Whether ‘climbing Everest’, as he described the effort of performing Shakespeare’s foolish monarch, playing Shylock in the Merchant of Venice, or while conveying Macbeth’s paranoia and despair, he was an almost unworldly stage presence: creative, intense and dazzling.
Antony Sher (pictured) as Sir John Falstaff and Alex Hassell as Prince Hal in Henry IV Part I and II by William Shakespeare
Sher’s death at 72 from cancer was reported yesterday. Over his 50-year career, Sher played virtually every Shakespearean part.
Only Hamlet was omitted, with Sher saying – with characteristic insecurity – that a sense of ‘self-oppression’ prevented him from treading the boards as the Dane.
‘I thought I wasn’t what Hamlet looked like,’ he said. ‘There was an old-fashioned idea that he had to be tall and handsome and blond. But that’s nonsense, of course. I missed it and it’s my own fault. But otherwise, Shakespeare served me very well.’
Sher saw language as a performance art. ‘To an actor, dialogue is like food,’ he wrote. ‘You hold it in your mouth, you taste it. If it’s good dialogue, the taste will be distinctive.
‘If it’s Shakespeare dialogue, the taste will be Michelin-starred.’
But the feast of his life wasn’t without its problems: Sher had to be treated at times for both depression and cocaine addiction due to his insecurities. ‘I always felt like a trespasser,’ he said.
Simon Callow was his long-running, viciously jealous rival. He felt that Callow was getting cast in roles he did not deserve.
‘I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him,’ said Sher, who was knighted in 2000.
His jealousy of Callow ‘might shoot off the Richter Scale … I’ll never forget the terrible sensations that consumed me whenever I saw his name. The feeling of jealousy can feel exhausting and insatiable, small and large. It’s somewhere between a fever and an itching sensation.
‘A kind of hunger, a kind of despair. A fear, a dread, a murderousness.’
Thanks to Le Caprice’s four-hour meal, the thespian ill will was finally quelled.
Sher worked for most of his life in the highest ranks of his profession but never lost his place as an outsider.
Actor Sir Antony Sher (right), with Greg Doran at Islington Town Hall North London, Wednesday 21 December 2005, following their civil partnerships ceremony
Born in a middle-class suburb of Cape Town in 1949, the ‘weedy’ young Anthony was obsessed with drama. Anthony would listen to Laurence Olivier’s Othello LPs over and over again.
His identity was mixed, gay and Jewish. He did not fit the South African macho-sports-mad culture.
1968 was the year he set sail for England to pursue drama school. He wanted to be like his theater heroes Olivier, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson.
But Rada flatly rejected him, Sher later recalling that the venerable theatre school sent him a letter that read: ‘Not only have you failed this audition, we strongly urge you to seek a different career.’
He attended the Webber-Douglas Academy and concealed his South African roots, Jewishness, or sexuality. ‘I was in so many closets,’ he later said.
He fell in with Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre crowd including young actors Julie Walters and Pete Postlethwaite, who became lifelong friends.
Willy Russell’s play John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Bert was presented at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre. (Sherfar right is drummer Ringo).
His break came in Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man, a BBC adaptation for which he was Bafta-nominated.
After he was accepted by the RSC, Richard III was cast in an RSC production in 1983. Sher played Richard III on crutches.
It caused sensation and was immediately followed by an amazing West End performance, Torch Song Trilogy. In which he played the role of a New York gay drag artist, it became a huge success.
He met Greg Doran in 1987 while playing Shylock. Now, the RSC’s artistic director, Doran is his love story.
They became Theatreland’s leading ‘power couple’, with Doran directing Sher in a run of outstanding productions, including King Lear in 2016. The couple formed a civil partner in 2005.
Sher was also a regular on TV and in films, most notably his role as Disraeli for Mrs Brown. In a departure from his normal fare, he was in Yanks as well as Superman II.