Sir Antony Sher

Antony Sher was born in Cape Town into a Lithuanian Jewish family and grew up feeling alienated as an artistic, gay youth in apartheid South Africa. Emigrating to Britain in 1968, he trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1982, forming a lifelong personal and creative partnership with director Gregory Doran.

In 1984, Sher stunned theater audiences worldwide with his visceral, acrobatic performance as Richard III, moving on forearm crutches like a predatory "bottled spider," chronicled in his bestselling rehearsal diary Year of the King. He won Laurence Olivier Awards for Torch Song Trilogy and Stanley, and delivered definitive interpretations of King Lear, Falstaff, Shylock, and Macbeth, receiving a knighthood in 2000 for services to theatre.