Antony Sher
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Sir Antony Sher KBE (born 14 June 1949) is an actor and novelist. He has a South African background, being born into a Lithuanian-Jewish family in Cape Town (his uncle is Ronald Harwood), but he has worked mainly in the United Kingdom and is now a British citizen.
In 1968, after completing his compulsory military service, he left for London to audition at the Central School of Speech and Drama, but was unsuccessful. Instead, he studied at the Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art from 1969 to 1971. After training, and some early performances with the theatre group Gay Sweatshop, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982. His big breakthrough came in 1985, when he played the title role in Shakespeare's Richard III. This won him the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award. Since then he has played the lead in many big productions, including Tamburlaine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Stanley, and Macbeth.
Despite his success, a shy and insecure Sher turned to cocaine as an antidote and by 1996 spent three weeks in rehabilitation.
In 1997, his portrayal of Disraeli in the film Mrs. Brown was well received, and he won his second Laurence Olivier Award for his role as Stanley Spencer.
In 1998 he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Liverpool University.
In television, he starred in the miniseries The History Man (1981) and The Jury (2002).
He was created a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) for his services to the theatre in 2000.
In 2005 he and his partner, the director Greg Doran, became one of the first gay couples to form a civil partnership in Britain.
Antony Sher's books include the memoirs Woza Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus in South Africa, with Gregory Doran (1997), Year of the King (1985), Beside Myself (2002), Characters (1990), and Primo Time (2005); the novels, Cheap Lives (1995), The Indoor Boy (1996), Middlepost (1989), and The Feast (1999); and the play ID (2003).
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