Antony Sher, last of the guts-and-glory 'heroic' actors, has left his mark on a generation

Antony Sher was the starry-eyed South African outsider who set his sights on becoming an actor in England and after moving here in 1968 went on to exceed his wildest dreams. He became a venerated star himself in our theatre firmament and even – so it was widely stated – Prince Charles’ favourite player. Thanks to his artistic and personal partnership with director turned RSC artistic director Gregory Doran, we got to see him excel in a multitude of roles until very recently.

Gone at 72, he is outlived by a number of other eminent Shakespearean actors – Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart prominently among them. But with his sad passing, I think we are bidding adieu not just to a remarkable classical actor, whose stamina and prowess could put others in the shade, but a whole post-war tradition of guts and glory "heroic" acting.

Although intensely shy as a youth, and lacking physical confidence, Sher could transform himself on stage to become the embodiment of unabashed masculinity. That’s not to do with roaring excess, more a quality of brooding muscular intensity that commands attention and makes plausible the kings and warriors of the classical repertoire.

If the 1960s ensured that the RSC achieved lift-off, it was Sher’s vigour that enabled it to sustain itself during the more faltering phase of the 1980s. He effectively took on the mantle of company stalwart and electrifying leading player from Alan Howard, who had been with the company through the 1970s, and contributed a performance that became part of theatrical lore, Richard III.

This Richard was a tour de force that left its mark on the role for a generation, and had people talking about it beyond the usual circles of habitual theatregoing. First seen in Stratford in 1984, it had critics reaching for superlatives. Swinging on crutches, this hunched, glinting, spidery presence, dressed in shiny black, moved at a speed commensurate with his twists of thought.

An audio recording (held by the British Library), in which Sher’s Richard wooingly confronts the grieving, widowed Lady Anne beside the hearse of Henry VI, registers an exhilarating switch between plaintive earnestness and chillingly enjoyable calculation: “Didst thou not kill this king?” Penny Downie’s Anne asks. “I grant thee,” he breezily replies, and the audience is stunned into laughter.

Any actor of stature will commit themselves body and soul to a principal role, but with Sher you always felt that he had revolved over every detail like few others, never content with half-measures. That meant that though he wasn’t a household TV name, in the way, say, McKellen became, he would draw people in, brought glamour to the occasion.

For me, his Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, a curling, seething force of jealousy and erratic, splenetic madness, remains one of the RSC’s finest. He applied a mesmeric athleticism and sinister bluff affability to his Iago in Othello (2004), cementing his reputation for evoking envious, fragile, driven psyches.

As he got older, the physical tenacity weakened but the gain was palpable vulnerability – witness his Prospero, part of a South African production of the play that served as a kind of reckoning with Apartheid-era guilt. For months during the lockdown and after, the poster of the RSC play he was appearing in when Covid hit – Kunene and the King, which brought him back to South Africa and face to face with his old acting pal John Kani – stayed outside the Ambassador’s theatre, Sher smiling down like some sun-god. Though the poster finally vanished, there's no question his name and example will blaze on.