Antony Sher

Born in Cape Town, Antony Sher came to London in 1968, and trained at the Webber Douglas Academy. He is now regarded as one of Britain’s leading actors, as well as a respected author and artist. Much of his career has been with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he is an Associate Artist. He has played Richard III, Macbeth, Leontes, Prospero, Shylock, Iago and Falstaff, as well as the leading roles in Cyrano de Bergerac, Tamburlaine the Great, The Roman Actor, Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, Peter Flannery’s Singer, Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye, and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Film and television appearances include Mrs Brown, Alive and Kicking, The History Man, Macbeth and J.G. Ballard’s Home. Following his debut as a writer with Year of the King (1985), an account of playing Richard III, he has written four novels – Middlepost, Indoor Boy, Cheap Lives and The Feast – as well as other theatre journals, Woza Shakespeare! (co-written with his partner, the director Greg Doran) and Primo Time. His autobiography Beside Myself was published in 2001. His plays include I.D. (premiered at the Almeida Theatre, 2003) and The Giant(premiered at Hampstead Theatre, 2007). He has published a book of his paintings and drawings, Characters (1989), and held exhibitions of his work at the National Theatre, the London Jewish Cultural Centre, the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and the Herbert Gallery in Coventry. Among numerous awards, he has won the Olivier Best Actor Award on two occasions (Richard III/Torch Song Trilogy and Stanley), the Evening Standard Best Actor Award (Richard III), and the Evening Standard Peter Sellers Film Award (for Disraeli in Mrs Brown). On Broadway, he won Best Solo Performer in both the Outer Critics’ Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Primo. He has honorary Doctorates of Letters from the universities of Liverpool, Exeter, Warwick, and Cape Town. In 2000 he was knighted for his services to acting and writing.