Year of the Mad King: The Lear Diaries

About Antony Sher

Born in Cape Town Antony Sher came to London in 1968 and trained at the Webber Douglas Academy. He is now regarded as one of Britain''s leading actors as well as a respected author and artist. Much of his career has been with the Royal Shakespeare Company where he is an Associate Artist. He has played Richard III Macbeth Leontes Prospero Shylock Iago and Falstaff as well as the leading roles in Cyrano de Bergerac Tamburlaine the Great The Roman Actor Tom Stoppard''s Travesties Peter Flannery''s Singer Athol Fugard''s Hello and Goodbye and Arthur Miller''s Death of a Salesman. At the National Theatre he played the title roles in Primo (his own adaptation of Primo Levi''s If This is a Man) Pam Gems''s Stanley Brecht''s Arturo Ui Shakespeare''s Titus Andronicus (a co-production with the Market Theatre Johannesburg) as well as Astrov in Chekhov''s Uncle Vanya and Jacob in Nicholas Wright''s Travelling Light. In the West End his roles have included Arnold in Harvey Fierstein''s Torch Song Trilogy Muhammed in Mike Leigh''s Goose-pimples and Gellburg in Arthur Miller''s Broken Glass. He played Freud in Terry Johnson''s Hysteria at Bath''s Theatre Royal and Hampstead Theatre. Film and television appearances include Mrs Brown Alive and Kicking The History Man Macbeth and J.G. Ballard''s Home. Following his debut as a writer with Year of the King (1985) an account of playing Richard III he has written four novels - Middlepost Indoor Boy Cheap Lives and The Feast - as well as other theatre journals Woza Shakespeare! (co-written with his partner the director Greg Doran) and Primo Time. His autobiography Beside Myself was published in 2001. His plays include I.D. (premiered at the Almeida Theatre 2003) and The Giant (premiered at Hampstead Theatre 2007). He has published a book of his paintings and drawings Characters (1989) and held exhibitions of his work at the National Theatre the London Jewish Cultural Centre the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and the Herbert Gallery in Coventry. Among numerous awards he has won the Olivier Best Actor Award on two occasions (Richard III/Torch Song Trilogy and Stanley) the Evening Standard Best Actor Award (Richard III) and the Evening Standard Peter Sellers Film Award (for Disraeli in Mrs Brown). On Broadway he won Best Solo Performer in both the Outer Critics'' Circle and Drama Desk Awards for Primo. He has honorary Doctorates of Letters from the universities of Liverpool Exeter Warwick and Cape Town. In 2000 he was knighted for his services to acting and writing.