The Royal Shakespeare Company announced today that actor Antony Sher, who won numerous awards for his work on stage and screen, died at the age of 72. (RSC). South African-born actor Sher has played nearly every major Shakespearean role, from King Lear to Shylock, making him one of the greatest contemporary actors in the United Kingdom. In 1985, he won the Olivier Award for best actor for his energetic portrayal of Richard III on crutches. Gregory Doran, the RSC’s artistic director at the time, was Sher’s future husband. A source close to the royal family once described Sher as “Prince Charles’ favorite actor.”
They were the first legally recognized gay civil partnership in the United Kingdom in 2005. Doran took a leave of absence from his job in September to devote his time and energy to his terminally ill husband’s care.
To RSC Executive Director Catherine Malyon, Acting Artistic Director Erica Whyman expressed her “deep sadness” over Sher’s death.
They stated that they were thinking of Greg and Antony’s family as well as their friends during this difficult time.
A Thinking Man
Sher was born to a Lithuanian Jewish family a year after apartheid was imposed in Cape Town. Sher admitted in 2000 that “I was raised by white people” as a child.
As a child, I was unaware of apartheid’s atrocities due to my parents’ lack of political awareness. Yes, this is correct.
He moved to the United Kingdom from South Africa when he was 19 years old, in 1968. In South Africa’s macho sports culture, I felt completely out of place. Everything was making me nervous. My interests were centered on the visual and performing arts.”
When he was rejected from the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, things did not go as planned.
After being accepted into another acting school, he worked with Jonathan Pryce and Julie Walters at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, England.
During his time on the stage in the 1970s and 1980s, he established a reputation for politically-charged performances while also learning about theatre and life. “I tried to be straight for a few years, had several relationships with women before I said, ‘This is ridiculous,'” he said in an interview with Monocle online radio.
“I was afraid to be open about my homosexuality because I was aware of it and did not want to be.” I had to do a lot of closet cleaning when I decided to come out as gay, white South African, and Jewish.
South African Star
The 1998 film Sher, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes, was a box office success. In the same year that Judi Dench was nominated for her role as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.
He was hospitalized for cocaine addiction in 1996, and the films were released the following year. For years, Sher wished to play Hamlet in Shakespeare’s plays, but he was denied the role due to his lack of height and beauty.
His mother’s presence at Buckingham Palace after he was knighted in 2000 was one of his proudest moments. It took him a while to accept that he was “a bit of a closet knight,” but he did so in the end.
“I’ve come out in many areas of my life, but I’m still working on this one,” he said the following year.
In 2015, the South African told The Times that he still felt like a “boy in Cape Town, growing up and feeling uneasy in the world” after winning the prestigious award.
