One of the great actors of our time dies aged 72

Sir Antony Sher was one of the great actors of our time, perhaps best known for his outstanding performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company from the 1980s to his trilogy as Falstaff (2014), Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (2015) and Lear (2016, 2018), all directed by the RSC’s Artistic Director, Gregory Doran.

Sher will always be remembered for his Shakespearean roles, especially the Fool in King Lear (1982-83), his reinvention of the role of Richard III (1984), Shylock (1987), Titus Andronicus (1994-95), Macbeth (1999-2001) and Prospero (2008). He was one of the stars in the golden age of the RSC, but some of his best performances were in contemporary plays: Ringo Starr in Willy Russell’s John, Paul, George, Ringo – and Bert (1974); David Hare’s Teeth ‘n’ Smiles (1975-76); Arnold in Torch Song Trilogy (1985); Peter Flannery’s Singer (1990); Henry Carr in Stoppard’s masterpiece Travesties (1993); and Freud in Terry Johnson’s Hysteria (2012-13).

What stands out from these performances was the range: kings and Jewish salesmen, flamboyant gays and slum landlords. There was also the physicality. As Stoppard’s Henry Carr, he fizzed with energy and as Richard III he leapt across the stage on his crutches. He could be gentle and sad as the artist Stanley Spencer at the National Theatre, but also terrifying as Richard III or Titus Andronicus, a creature of appetites as Falstaff or Howard Kirk in The History Man (1981) or a wise explorer of the mind as Freud.

He played the greatest parts classical and modern theatre have to offer, but some of his best performances were small yet perfect roles, such as the softly spoken watchmaker with a secret past, Peter Glickman, in Hugo Blick’s brilliant TV drama The Shadow Line (2011).

Sher was a threefold outsider: South African, Jewish and gay. Born in Cape Town in 1949, he left at 18 to go to drama school in London and lived in Britain for the rest of his life. It is no coincidence that some of his greatest performances were as Jews, Willy Loman and Phillip Gellburg in Miller’s Broken Glass (2011), but also some of the great figures of modern Jewish culture, Freud, Kafka and Primo Levi.

Perhaps above all, he was so multi-talented. A great actor, of course, on stage and screen, but also a talented artist, who illustrated many of his own books, a gifted novelist and a writer who brought the craft of acting to life in a fascinating series of memoirs about some of his greatest roles.

I met Sher once, producing a BBC Two programme with him in the 1990s. He was gentle, kind and softly spoken. It was hard to believe this was the man who electrified audiences with his performances as Cyrano, Tartuffe and Kean and created the greatest Richard III of his generation, perhaps the best ever. But this is what great actors do. Before your very eyes they transform themselves. A gentle, bespectacled, gay Jewish man becomes a great king or a ferocious warrior. We are all fortunate to have seen such performances by Sir Antony Sher, one of the great actors of the post-war period.

By David Herman