So very sad to read of the death of Sir Antony Sher one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation. Sher may have been born in South Africa to Lithuanian-Jewish parents but after he came to London to study drama at the age of 19 in 1968, the Brits claimed him as one of their own.
He was of the rare few openly gay actors at the time Sher as well as tackling the classics at the beginning of his career, he also did a turn playing Beatles drummer Ringo Starr in the Willy Russell play John, Paul, George, Ringo…& Bert. Also back in those days he noticeable performed with the Gay Sweatshop Theater Group and proved to his peers (and the world in general) that being queer then was not a hindrance at all
When he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982, Sher’s career really took off with his now-legendary performances in Richard 111, King Lear, and Moliere’s Tartuffe. In 1995 he played Arnold in the London version of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy for which he won the Olivier Award for Best Actor.
Sher repeated most of his great Shakespearean roles in the US at the Brooklyn Academy of Art. Also his performance as Primo Levi in a one-man-play reminiscing about his life in Auschwitz, which Sher also had written, he won a Drama Desk Award. His resume would go on to include playing Willy Loman in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Death of a Salesman, Nicholas in Pinter’s One for the Road in the West End, and finally, Jack Morris in Kunene and the King, which was written by his longtime friend and collaborator, John Kani.
In addition to all this Sher was also a widely exhibited artist, having turned to art therapy while in rehab for cocaine addiction in the 1990s. He was also the author of the now-legendary theater diaries Year of the King, Year of the Fat Knight, and Year of the Mad King, as well as four novels, three plays, a screenplay, and an autobiography.
Plus there was his TV and film work: he was in Shakespeare In Love, played Hitler in The Churchill Years, and took on the role of Prime Minister Disraeli to Judi Dench’s Queen Victoria in Mrs.Brown.
The list is not only extremely impressive and seemingly endless but very surprisingly despite all this, what sticks so fondly in our minds is a small low-budget queer movie from 1996 called Alive and Kicking. Sher played the older man in a May-December relationship with a passionately committed young dancer who is forced to re-examine his career and life when faced with death. It’s one of those really moving performances which you never ever seem to forget, even though it is not as large and grand as any of his Shakespearean roles.
HM the Queen shared our enthusiasm for Sher and she knighted him in 2010. The late Sir Antony Sher may not have created a very larger-than-life queer profile like other gay actors who came out later in life (like Ian McKellan) but he gained his iconic status by just being his true self from the very start. The example he set for other gay actors (and non-actors) will always be remembered.
Sir Antony is survived by his husband and partner for more than 30 years, Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Gregory Doran whom he married in 2015.
R.I.P. Antony Sher KBE: 14 June 1949 - 2 December 2021
