At the Prince of Wales’s 50th birthday party at Buckingham Palace, Sir Geoffrey Cass, who was then the chairman of the Royal Shakespeare Company, presented Antony Sher to the Queen. ‘He is one of our leading actors, ma’am,’ Sir Geoffrey whispered into her ear. Her Majesty frowned, paused for a very long time and finally said, ‘Oh, are you?’
A string of words, mercifully unuttered, formed in Sher’s head. ‘No, of course not, Your Majesty, you’ve seen through me. I’m just a little gay Yid from somewhere called Sea Point on the other side of the world. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know why I am. I am an impostor.’
Only an angry, if not an incandescent, outsider, could have thought in such terms, but nine years on, after a knighthood, a civil partnership, much psychotherapy and, funnily enough, a convivial stay at Sandringham as a house guest of the Queen’s oldest son, Sher seems to have come to an accommodation with himself and with life.
‘I have come to enjoy being an outsider,’ he says. ‘All the anger that I’ve had has actually worked out rather well for me. Certainly I wouldn’t have had the career I’ve had without it.’
Sir Antony, who turns 58 this month, is talking to me in his cramped dressing-room at the Apollo Theatre where he is appearing in the title role in Kean. He last appeared on stage two years ago in Primo on Broadway. He had wanted to concentrate on his painting and writing after that, and he had wanted to see, too, if he could get by without acting. He could not.
He feels a particular affinity with the great 19th-century actor. When Sher came to Britain from his native South Africa in 1968, he recalls that all the greatest names in the theatre at the time — Olivier, Gielgud, Richardson, et al.
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