Antony Sher Biography
Antony Sher is a British actor of South African descent, two-time winner of the Laurence Olivier Award and four-time nominee who joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 and performed in numerous positions, appeared on film and television and worked as a writer and director of the theatre.
In 2001, he starred Mahler’s Conversion in his cousin Ronald Harwood’s play and said that his own identity struggles reflected the tale of a composer sacrificing his faith for his profession. Sher and Gregory Doran, his partner and collaborator, became one of the first gay couples to enter a civil partnership in the UK. Prince Charles called Sher his favorite actor during his 2017 “Commonwealth Tour.”
Antony Sher Age
Sher was born on June 14, 1949, in Cape Town, South Africa. She is 70 years as of 2019.
Antony Sher Early Life
Sher was born into a Lithuanian-Jewish family that worked in a company in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of Emmanuel and Margery Sher. He grew up in the Sea Point suburb and is Ronald Harwood’s playwright cousin. However, Sher has worked primarily in the UK and is now a British citizen.
He left for London in 1968 for an audition at the Central School of Speech and Drama and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) after finishing his compulsory military service but was unsuccessful. Instead, from 1969 to 1971, he studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. He entered the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 after training and some early performances with the theater group Gay Sweatshop.
Antony Sher Height
He stands at a height of 5′ 6″
Antony Sher Image
Antony Sher Career
Sher was part of a group of young actors and authors working at the Everyman Theater in Liverpool in the 1970s. Comprising figures like writers Alan Bleasdale and Willy Russell, as well as fellow actors Trevor Eve, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Pryce, and Julie Walters, Sher summarized the company’s work with the phrase “anarchy ruled.”
Sher took the title position at Tartuffe with the Royal Shakespeare Company and played the Fool at King Lear. In 1984, when he played the title role in Richard III and won the Laurence Olivier Award, his large break came. He has since performed the lead in films like Tamburlaine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Stanley, and Macbeth, and performed Falstaff in Stratford-upon-Avon and on domestic tour in Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2 in 2014. He performed the eponymous’ King Lear’ from 2016-2018 most lately. In Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye, Iago in Othello, Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Shylock in Venice’s Merchant, he has also performed Johnnie. Sher received his second Laurence Olivier Award in 1997 for his performance as the eponymous Stanley Spencer in Stanley.
In 2001, in Ronald Harwood’s play Mahler’s Conversion, Sher performed the part of composer Gustav Mahler over Mahler’s choice to renounce his Jewish faith prior to his appointment as conductor and artistic director of the Vienna State Opera House in 1897. Speaking of Rupert Smith’s position in The Guardian, Sher disclosed:
“When I came to England in 1968, at 19, I looked around me and I didn’t see any Jewish leading men in the classical theatre, so I thought it best to conceal my Jewishness. Also, I quickly became conscious of apartheid when I arrived here, and I didn’t want to be known as a white South African. I was brought up in a very apolitical family. We were happy to enjoy the benefits of apartheid without questioning the system behind it. Reading about apartheid when I came to England was a terrible shock. So I lost the accent almost immediately, and if anyone asked me where I was from I would lie. If they asked where I went to school, I’d say Hampstead, which got me into all sorts of trouble because of course everyone else went to school in Hampstead and they wanted to know which one. Then there was my sexuality. The theatre was full of gay people, but none of them were out, and there was that ugly story about Gielgud being arrested for cottaging, so I thought I’d better hide that as well. Each of these things went into the closet until my entire identity was in the closet. That’s why this play appealed to me so much: it’s about an artist changing his identity in order to get what he wants.”
He played Willy Loman in a Salesman’s Death in 2015.
His name also includes Yanks (1979), Superman II (1980), Shadey (1985) and Erik the Viking (1989), among others. Sher starred in the 1996 movie adaptation of The Wind in the Willows as Chief Weasel and in the 1997 movie Mrs. Brown as Benjamin Disraeli.
The TV appearances of Sher include The History Man (1981) and The Jury (2002) mini-series. In 2003, in a J adaptation, he played the main character. G. Ballard’s short story, “The Huge Space,” shot as Home and broadcast on BBC Four. In Hornblower (1999), in the episode “The Frogs and the Lobsters,” he played the part of French catholic Colonel de Moncoutant, Marquis de Muzillac. More latest credits include a cameo in the British comedy movie Three and Out (2008) and Akiba’s role in God on Trial (2008) television.
Sher was cast in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’s role as Thrain, dad of Thorin Oakenshield, but appears only in the film’s Extended Edition.
He performed the title role in King Lear in 2018 and is the only individual in the Royal Shakespeare Company to perform both the Fool and King Lear. In 2019, he came back to Stratford-upon-Avon to play with John Kani in Kunene and the King.
Antony Sher Other Work
Sher’s books include the memoirs Year of the King (1985), Woza Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus in South Africa (with Gregory Doran, 1997), Beside Myself (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 novel, Mad King’s Year, won the Society for Theater Research’s 2019 Theater Book Prize.
She also wrote a number of plays, including I.D. (2003) and (2004) Primo. In 2005, the latter was adapted as a movie. In 2008, The Giant was conducted at the Hampstead Theatre, the first of his plays in which Sher did not feature. The primary protagonists are their mutual apprentice Michelangelo (at the moment of David’s formation), Leonardo da Vinci and Vito.
Sher directed Breakfast With Mugabe at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Swan Theater in 2005. In April 2006, the production moved to the Soho Theater and a month later to the Duchess Theater. He produced a crime documentary about his indigenous South Africa in 2007 for Channel 4, titled Murder Most Foul. It examines actor Brett Goldin’s double assassination and Richard Bloom’s fashion designer. In 2011, Sher appeared in Glickman’s role in the BBC TV series The Shadow Line.
Antony Sher Marriage
Sher and his partner – director Gregory Doran, with whom he often works professionally with – became one of the first homosexual couples to join a civil partnership in the UK in 2005. They married a little over ten years after their civil partnership on 30 December 2015.
Antony Sher Stage Performances
1972–74: Various roles at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool
1974: Ringo Starr in Willy Russell’s John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert at the Everyman Theatre, where it opened in May 1974. Transferred to the Lyric Theatre in August.
1975: Teeth ‘n’ Smiles at the Royal Court Theatre where it opened in September 1975, subsequently transferring to Wyndham’s Theatre in May 1976.
1982: Mike Leigh’s Goosepimples in the West End
1982: The Fool in King Lear at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Transferred to the Barbican Centre in 1983.
1984: Richard III with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Transferred to the Barbican Centre in 1985.
1985: Torch Song Trilogy at the Albery Theatre, London
1987: Shylock in The Merchant of Venice with the RSC
1987: Henry Irving in Happy Birthday, Sir Larry at the Royal National Theatre, London (Laurence Olivier 80th birthday tribute)
1990: Singer with the RSC
1991: The Trial and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at the National Theatre
1993: Henry Carr in Travesties at the Barbican Centre with the RSC
1994–95: Titus Andronicus at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. Transferred to the National Theatre and for a UK tour.
1997: Stanley at the National Theatre (repeated on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theatre)
1997: Cyrano de Bergerac at the Lyric Theatre
1998–99: The Winter’s Tale at the Barbican Centre with the RSC
1999: Macbeth at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, with the RSC
2000–01: Macbeth and The Winter’s Tale with the RSC
2002: RSC’s Jacobean season transfers to the West End.
2003: I.D. at the Almeida Theatre, London
2004: Primo at the Cottesloe Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London (repeated on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre, July–August 2005)
2007: Kean in Kean at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford. Transferred to the Apollo Theatre, London in May.
2008: Prospero in The Tempest at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town; Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; and on tour in Richmond, Leeds, Bath, Nottingham and Sheffield
2010: Tomas Stockmann in An Enemy of the People at the Sheffield Crucible
2012: Leading Role in Travelling Light at the Royal National Theatre
2013: Wilhelm Voigt in The Captain of Köpenick at the Olivier Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London
2014: Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2 with the Royal Shakespeare Company
2015: Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller with the Royal Shakespeare Company
2016: The title role in King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company (reprised in 2018)
2018: Nicolas in One for the Road from Pinter One at the Harold Pinter Theatre with The Jamie Lloyd Company.
Antony Sher Filmography
1976 The Madness as Militia man/Young man in café
1978 ITV Playhouse as Morris
1979 Collision Course as Tasic
Play for Today as Nathan
One Fine Day as Mr Alpert
Yanks as G.I. at cinema
1980 Superman II as Bell Boy
1985 Shadey as Oliver Shadey
1989 Erik the Viking as Loki
1990 Screenplay as David Samuels
1992 The Comic Strip Presents… as Scum editor
1993 Screen Two as Genghis Cohn
1994 Shakespeare: The Animated Tales as Richard III
1995 The Young Poisoner’s Handbook as Dr Ernest Zeigler
Look at the State We’re In! as The Don
1996 The Wind in the Willows as Chief Weasel
Indian Summer as Jack
1997 Mrs. Brown as Benjamin Disraeli
The Moonstone as Sergeant Cuff
1998 Shakespeare in Love as Dr Moth
1999 The Winter’s Tale as Leontes, King of Sicilia
2000 The Miracle Maker as Ben Azra (voice)
2001 Macbeth as Macbeth
2004 Murphy’s Law as Frank Jeremy
Churchill: The Hollywood Years as Adolf Hitler
2005 A Higher Agency Chef
Great Performances as Primo Levi
Primo as Primo Levi
2008 Three and Out as Maurice
Masterpiece Contemporary
2010 The Wolfman as Dr Hoenneger
2013 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug as Thráin (Extended Edition only)
2014 War Book as David
Antony Sher Television
1981 The History Man as Howard Kirk
1995 One Foot in the Grave: “Rearranging the Dust” as Mr Prothrow
1999 Hornblower: “The Frogs and the Lobsters” as Colonel Moncoutant
2002 The Jury as Gerald Lewis QC
2003 Home as Gerald Ballantyne
2007 The Company as Ezra ben Ezra, the Rabbi
2008 God on Trial as Akiba
2011 The Shadow Line as Peter Glickman
2013 Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Caribbean Mystery as Jason Rafiel
Antony Sher Honours
1998: Honorary Doctor of Letters (Hon. Litt.D.) from the University of Liverpool
2000: Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for services to theatre
2007: Honorary Doctor of Letters (Hon. Litt.D.) from the University of Warwick
2010: Honorary Doctor of Letters (Hon. Litt.D.) from the University of Cape Town