Antony Sher

At 74 years old, Antony Sher has this physical status:

Sir Antony Sher, KBE, born 14 June 1949, is a British actor of South African origin and four-time nominee who performed on stage and television, as well as appearing on film and television and appearing as a writer and drama director.

He appeared in his cousin Ronald Harwood's Conversion in 2001, and said that the tale of a composer losing his faith for his work resembled his own identity struggles. Sher and his partner, collaborator, and colleague Gregory Doran became one of the country's first gay couples to enter into a civil partnership. Prince Charles referred to Sher as his favorite actress during his 2017 "Commonwealth Tour."

Early life

Sher was born in Cape Town, South Africa, as the son of Margery (Abramowitz) and Emmanuel Sher, who worked in finance. He grew up in Sea Point, where he attended Sea Point High School, and was a first cousin, once removed, of playwright Sir Ronald Harwood. Sher lived in the United Kingdom for the most part and became a British citizen in 1979.

In 1968, after completing his compulsory National Service in the South African Defence Force, he left for London to attend the Central School of Speech and Drama and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), but he was dissatisfied. He then studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art from 1969 to 1971, then on a one-year postgraduate course taught jointly by Manchester University Drama Department and the Manchester School of Theatre.

Personal life

Jim Hooper, Sher's first husband (for more than 17 years), was her first companion (for more than 17 years). Sher and the director Gregory Doran, who often collaborated on a regular basis, became one of the first gay couples in the United Kingdom to enter into a civil partnership. They married on December 30, 2015, just over ten years after their civil union began.

Sher was terminally ill on September 10, 2021, and Doran took compassionate leave from the Royal Shakespeare Company to care for him. Sher died of cancer at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon on December 2nd, 2021, at the age of 72.

Source

Career

In the 1970s, Sher was part of a group of young actors and writers working at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre. Comprising figures such as writers Alan Bleasdale and Willy Russell and fellow actors Trevor Eve, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Pryce, and Julie Walters, Sher summed up the work of the company with the phrase "anarchy ruled". He also performed with the theatre group Gay Sweatshop, before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1982.

While a member of the RSC, Sher was cast in the title role in Molière's Tartuffe, and played the Fool in King Lear. His major break came in 1984, when he performed the title role in Richard III and won the Laurence Olivier Award. Also for the RSC, Sher performed the lead in such productions as Tamburlaine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Stanley, and Macbeth, and in 2014 played Falstaff in Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2 in Stratford-upon-Avon and on national tour. He played the eponymous 'King Lear' from 2016 to 2018. 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. Sher received his second Laurence Olivier Award in 1997 for his performance as Stanley Spencer in Stanley.

In 2001, Sher played the role of the composer Gustav Mahler in Ronald Harwood's play Mahler's Conversion, about Mahler's decision to renounce his Jewish faith prior to his appointment as conductor and artistic director of the Vienna State Opera House in 1897. Speaking about the role to The Guardian's Rupert Smith, Sher revealed:

In 2015 he played Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

He also had several film credits to his name, including Yanks (1979), Superman II (1980), Shadey (1985), and Erik the Viking (1989). Sher starred as the Chief Weasel in the 1996 film adaptation of The Wind in the Willows and as Benjamin Disraeli in the 1997 film Mrs Brown.

Sher's television appearances include the mini-series The History Man (1981) and The Jury (2002). In 2003, he played the central character in an adaptation of the J. G. Ballard short story "The Enormous Space", filmed as Home and broadcast on BBC Four. In Hornblower (1999), he played the role of French royalist Colonel de Moncoutant, Marquis de Muzillac, in the episode "The Frogs and the Lobsters". Sher's more recent credits included a cameo in the British comedy film Three and Out (2008) and the role of Akiba in the television play God on Trial (2008).

Sher was cast in the role of Thráin II, father of Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, but appears only in the Extended Edition of the film.

In 2018, he played the title role in King Lear and was the only person to play both the Fool and King Lear at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He returned to Stratford-upon-Avon in 2019 to perform in Kunene and the King with John Kani.

Sher's books included the memoirs Year of the King (1985), Woza Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus in South Africa (with Gregory Doran, 1997), Beside Myself (an autobiography, 2002), Primo Time (2005), and Year of the Fat Knight (2015), a book of paintings and drawings, Characters (1990), and the novels 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, awarded by the Society for Theatre Research.

Sher also wrote several plays, including I.D. (2003) and Primo (2004). The latter was adapted as a film in 2005. In 2008, The Giant, the first of his plays in which Sher did not feature, was performed at the Hampstead Theatre. The main characters are Michelangelo (at the time of his creation of David), Leonardo da Vinci, and Vito, their mutual apprentice.

In 2005, Sher directed Breakfast With Mugabe at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. The production moved to the Soho Theatre in April 2006 and the Duchess Theatre one month later. In 2007, he made a crime documentary for Channel 4, titled Murder Most Foul, about his native South Africa. It examines the double murder of actor Brett Goldin and fashion designer Richard Bloom. In 2011, Sher appeared in the BBC TV series The Shadow Line in the role of Glickman.

Source