Behind the scenes of a South African-born acting icon

To most people, he was Sir Antony Sher, one of Britain’s finest stage actors who was internationally renowned for tackling the toughest Shakespearean roles with successful stints on the big and small screen.

To his beloved family in South Africa, he was “just Ant”, not a “Sir” knighted by the Queen for his contribution to theatre or a celebrated thespian who graced the world’s most famous playhouses. They just saw him as a humble, reserved, and warm man who loved Cape Town with all his heart and visited as often as he could.

Sher died last week of cancer at the age of 72. His illness was reported in September, when the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) announced that its artistic director, Sher’s husband, Greg Doran, would be taking compassionate leave to care for him at the couple’s Stratford-upon-Avon home.

“In the United Kingdom [UK], they called him Tony. Here he was Antony, a loved son, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend,” said his niece, Monique Sher, this week.

“I fondly referred to him as ‘Sir Uncle’. He once jokingly teased I should be calling him ‘Sir Doctor Uncle’ because I think he received three honorary doctorates,” she said.

While the theatre world mourned Sher’s untimely passing, his family took time to reflect on his “magnificent life well lived”.

“He was a very lucky man whose passion became his job, and he was good at it,” said Monique. “He died too young at 72, but he had an amazing, wonderful, full life.”

She said Sher and Doran, who directed him in many plays, loved to travel and went everywhere together.

“From the gorillas in Uganda to my late great-grandfather’s village in Lithuania, they travelled a lot.”

Not only was Sher a hugely celebrated actor, he was a fine artist and the accomplished author of several books.

“He got to do it all. What a great life he had!” she said.

Monique’s father, Randall Sher, said he was hoping to see his late brother soon in London. “Antony and I were very close – as close as brothers could be,” he said.

“Antony called me from the UK most Sundays at about 18:00. We were always on the same page. I cannot remember having any disagreements with him,” he said.

Sher was one of four siblings including Randall, the eldest, then their sister Verne, Antony in the middle, followed by Joel, the youngest.

The children were born and raised in Sea Point, where the boys attended Sea Point Primary and High School.

Their parents, Mannie and Margery, were very supportive of Sher, visiting him annually in London and accompanying him when Sher was knighted.

“There was a big leaning towards the theatre in our home because our mother was mad about it,” said Randall. “We were very much a theatre-going family although my father fell asleep from the minute the curtain was raised until the end. He would often attend Antony’s performances in London only to sleep through the entire show.”

As a child, he said Antony was “withdrawn and quiet”.

“He was very artistic and liked to do his own thing. He had one or two good friends. but liked to stay pretty much to himself. He was very talented, and it was often a toss-up over whether he should pursue acting or art as a career,” he said.

After completing compulsory military service, Sher moved to London at the age of 19 to study drama and acting. After stints with various performance schools, his professional career began at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre before he moved to the RSC in 1982.

It took him years to forge an identity he was comfortable with. He’s quoted in The Times as saying, “Gay, Jewish, white South African, that’s three minority groups. I wasn’t ready to come out as gay. Jewish I was a bit worried about because I couldn’t see any examples of great leading classical actors who were Jewish, and white South African was a problem because my political education didn’t really start until I got here [Britain] and I suddenly realised I’d been part of one of the most abhorrent societies on earth.”

From the RSC, a career as one of the greatest stage actors of his time began. His many tributes all mention his astounding 1984 performance as the titular king in Shakespeare’s Richard III as his breakthrough. He would win the Laurence Olivier Award – the most prestigious theatre award in the UK – for the performance as well as for his diverse portrayals including a drag artist in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy. In his acceptance speech, he quipped, “I’m very happy to be the first actor to win an award for playing both a king and a queen.”

Sher went on to win once more in 1997. He toured the country performing with the RSC, and also appeared in television and film productions.

One of Sher’s favourite longstanding family traditions was to jump off the imposing granite rocks into the icy sea at Saunders’ Rocks Beach in Bantry Bay.

“Once he did it on the way to the airport after one of his visits,” said Monique.

Though the family wasn’t religious, they would always get together for meals on Friday nights and high holidays.

Upon hearing the news of his passing, Prince Charles paid tribute to Sher, calling him a “great man and an irreplaceable talent”. In a statement posted on his official website, he wrote that he was “deeply saddened” by the news.

“As the president of the Royal Shakespeare Company, I had the great joy and privilege of knowing him for many years, and admired him enormously for the consummate skill and passion he brought to every role,” Prince Charles wrote. “My most treasured memory of him was as Falstaff in a brilliant production of Greg Doran’s. I feel particularly blessed to have known him, but we have all lost a giant of the stage at the height of his genius.”

Sher was a prolific writer, with novels such as Middlepost (1989) named after the blink-and-you-miss-it town founded by his grandfather when the family arrived in South Africa in the early 1900s; an autobiography titled Beside Myself (2001); and theatre-diaries-cum-acting manuals for young actors including Year of the King (1985), chronicling his role in Richard 111; Year of the Fat Knight (2015) about working on Falstaff; and Year of the ‘Mad King’ (2018) after his portrayal of King Lear which earned him the 2019 Theatre Book Prize.

His lifelong “work-and-life” friend, well known South African theatre director Janice Honeyman, described Sher as her “theatre-hero”, her “soul-brother, buddy, colleague, thinker, perfectionist, personal teacher, inspiration, and consummate artist” whom she had known since childhood.

In a tribute to her friend in the Sunday Times, she said, “You have always been pure pleasure to direct – you showed willingness to go anywhere I led you, you were greedy for direction, for exploration, for personalising the role, internalising, finding the intimate and infinite detail in the writing, every aspect of your character, and ever-eager for more and more notes to work on! Have you any idea, Tony, how stimulating and gratifying that is for any director?”

Another of his closest friends and colleagues, celebrated actor, activist, and playwright, John Kani, said he was “gutted and left breathless” by the news.

Ironically, Kani last worked with Sher on Kani’s Kunene and the King, the story of an actor trying to get to play King Lear while dying of liver cancer, directed by Honeyman.

Sher’s great-nephew, Joshua Maughan, posted on Facebook, “Not only was he a great uncle, but a mentor and role model who helped me to navigate some of the most transformative moments in my life. It seems more pertinent than ever that the first text we worked on together was Richard II where we sat, overlooking Cape Town’s endless oceans, discussing the stark reality of mortality and how tangible life feels. I will always carry an indescribable amount of love and gratitude for all you were and all you did. I have no doubt that you’re sipping a strong [as it should be] G&T with the Bard upstairs. I miss you already.”