The Royal Shakespeare Company said Friday that Antony Sher, one of the most celebrated Shakespearean performers of his time, has died. He was 72 years old at the time.
This year, Sher was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Gregory Doran, creative director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, took time off work to care for him.
Sher was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1949 and travelled to the United Kingdom in the late 1960s to study acting. He joined the RSC in 1982 and made his mark as the usurping king in Richard III in 1984.
He went on to play the title characters in Macbeth and King Lear, as well as Falstaff in the Henry IV plays, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Iago in Othello, and Falstaff in the Henry IV plays.
Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and the title character in Moliere’s Tartuffe were non-Shakespearean parts for the company, which was situated in the Bard’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Sher also appeared in many of London’s major theatres, including Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, where he had his first West End starring role as a drag artist. He shared the 1985 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Torch Song Trilogy and Richard III.
For his performance as artist Stanley Spencer in Pam Gems’ Stanley at the National Theatre and on Broadway, he received a second Olivier Award nomination as well as a Tony Award nomination.
Sher began to investigate both his Jewish and South African ancestors after becoming a pillar of British theatre.
Primo, a one-man stage production based on Primo Levi’s devastating Auschwitz memoir, was performed on Broadway in 2005.Despite suffering from crippling stage fear, he devised the solo show. “Is it a good idea to perform a one-man show if you have stage fright?” “Unexpectedly,the answer is yes,” Sher told the Associated Press in 2005. “Because it’s make or break, it’s the best remedy for stage fright in the world.” There is no such thing as a middle ground.”
Sher’s latest role for the RSC was in South African playwright John Kani’s Kunene and The King, which he played in 2019. Sher portrayed a cancer-stricken older actor who was cared for by a Black South African caregiver. Kani, who co-starred with Sher in the film, described the two men as “comrades in the quest for a better South Africa.”