Royal Shakespeare Company actor Antony Sher dies at age 72
- Sher had been diagnosed with terminal cancer earlier this year. His husband, RSC artistic director Gregory Doran, took leave from his job to care for him
- Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1949, Sher moved to Britain in the late 1960s to study drama and joined the RSC in 1982
Antony Sher, one of the most acclaimed Shakespearean actors of his generation, has died aged 72, the Royal Shakespeare Company said on Friday.
Sher had been diagnosed with terminal cancer earlier this year. His husband, Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Gregory Doran, took leave from his job to care for him.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1949, Sher moved to Britain in the late 1960s to study drama. He joined the RSC in 1982 and had a breakthrough role in 1984 as the usurping king in Richard III, which won him a best-actor prize at British theatre’s Olivier Awards.
He went on to play most of Shakespeare’s meaty male roles, including Falstaff in the Henry IV plays, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Iago in Othello and the title characters in Macbeth and King Lear.
Non-Shakespearean roles for the company, based in the Bard’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, included Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and the title role in Moliere’s Tartuffe.
Sher also performed with Liverpool’s innovative Everyman Theatre and at many of London’s main theatres, getting his first West End starring role as a drag artist in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy in 1985.
He won a second Olivier, and got a Tony nomination, for playing artist Stanley Spencer in Pam Gems’ Stanley at the National Theatre and on Broadway.
