Antony Sher - Beside Myself: An Actors Life

Antony Sher

BESIDE MYSELF

An Actors Life

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

For my family:
My late parents Margery and Mannie,
My brothers Randall and Joel,
My sister Verne,
My civil partner Greg.

F OREWORD

I spent much of 2008 creating another autobiographical work. Not Beside Myself: , but a big oil painting (six by seven foot) called The Audience, reproduced on the following pages, as a work in progress. Ive been thinking about doing this for years, but my studio in London is too small, and I kept putting it off. But now, inspired by the approach of my sixtieth birthday, the time had come.

Knowing that my partner, Greg (Doran), would be based in Stratford throughout the year, directing a mammoth Shakespeare season (Hamlet, Loves Labours Lost, A Midsummer Nights Dream), I decided to turn down all acting jobs, and to find a large studio in town. At first I was lucky enough to acquire the art room at Shakespeares old school, King Edwards, while the pupils were on their summer break, and the Head of Art, David Troughton (not the actor) was available to assist and advise me. Then in August I moved across the road to Elizabeth House, the Stratford District Council, where the RSC presently rent the ground floor, using it as their Redevelopment Offices; they allowed me and my giant canvas to occupy an alcove on the way to the loos. Both these locations are near to our new Stratford home, which is a small but lovely apartment situated right on the banks of the river. Each morning, Greg would set off for rehearsals, and Id go to my studio, feeling rather like a part I once played, Stanley Spencer, in untidy, paint-stained clothes, carrying a plastic bag with old photos, other bits of reference material, and my lunchtime sandwich. Working at something on the scale of The Audience, which I hadnt done before, taught me that theres a side to painting which is just craft. Most of the picture is done with tiny brushes, so it was like ants scaling Everest. I enjoyed the workmanlike side of it: its less pressured than acting or writing. Today I must do this or that section, Id say to myself, then switch on Radio 4, and the hours would pass by in a haze of relaxed concentration. Broken by surges of emotion, when Id suddenly be wide awake to what I was doing, for parts of the painting unearthed some painful memories.

The Audience is a collection of 142 portraits, showing some of the people who have made an impact on my life, whether as public or private figures. Sitting in a delapidated auditorium are my family, my lovers, my friends, intermingling with international leaders (heroes and villains), favourite artists, writers and musicians, along with a few fictional people (like characters from my novels), as well as roles that Ive played, or have watched, in admiration, other actors play. And then there are several African masks, and the Indian deity Ganesh, god of Beginnings and Obstacles, and many empty seats too:dusty, moulding and torn, theyre meant as characters in themselves. The whole thing is a dream-like map of my life.

The seating plan was, at first, difficult to work out no, it was the dinner party from hell. Who would want to sit next to Hitler? (In profile, top right-hand corner.) No one. Except his younger self. (Just above, to the left.) But gradually the composition found its own stream-of-consciousness shape, sometimes flowing from right to left, sometimes up-down, sometimes diagonally. For example, after leaving a respectful distance of two empty seats next to the Fhrer, Leonard Rossiter appears in Brechts satire about the rise of the Nazi Party, Arturo Ui. Next to Rossiter is Chaplin, who also played Hitler in The Great Dictator (although here hes the Jewish barber in the same film). Below Rossiter is Simon Callow, in another great interpretation of Ui, and below him is Quasimodo, played by Charles Laughton, of whom Callow wrote a notable biography. And below Laughton (now that were into extreme portrayals of humanity) is the painter Francis Bacon, and hes passing Michelangelos self-portrait on a flayed skin (from The Last Judgement) to Shakespeare because Michelangelo died the same year that Shakespeare was born, and theres no better example of genius being handed on and Shakespeare is blank-faced since I have no idea of what he was actually like as a man

And so on.

I dont want to offer up a key, and decode the whole thing. Its too personal. More so than the pages of this book. In words, Im happy to be completely open and honest whats the point of writing an autobiography if you arent? but images are more private, more secret, even to yourself. Theyre more like the stuff that floats up in your dreams.

On the other hand, unlike dreams important to the dreamer, tedious to everyone else I hope that this jumble of faces, done in all sorts of different styles and sizes, and with a nonsensical perspective, will interest the viewer, even without a full understanding of every identity or juxtaposition.

After all, it is him or her the viewer that this strange crowd has gathered to see. When I began the painting, I thought that it was me standing on the stage in front of the audience, but no, my own self-images appear too often in various seats no, its you.

So whos looking at who ?

If someone has the chutzpah to publish an autobiography, and then, dear God, to republish it (my thanks to Nick Hern Books), they have to believe that their life, however particular it might feel from the inside, will also be recognisable to others. It is in this spirit, that I invite you to be my audience, and hear my story

Antony Sher, 2009

I LLUSTRATIONS

John, Paul, Ringo, George and Bert, Cloud Nine, and Prayer for My Daughter (John Haynes)

The History Man BBC Enterprises

Goose-pimples (John Haynes)

Torch Song Trilogy (Bruce Chatterton)

Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and Singer (Ivan Kyncl)

Holocaust Memorial, With Jacovas Bunka, In Plunge (Mark Douet)

Hello and Goodbye (Ivan Kyncl)

Alive and Kicking (Christine Parry Film Four)

Training for Tamburlaine (Ivan Kyncl)

Tamburlaine and Stanley (Donald Cooper)

Greg Directing (Jonathan Dockar-Drysdale)

Titus Andronicus (Henrietta Butler)

Cyrano de Bergerac (Zuleika Henry)

The Winters Tale and Macbeth (Jonathan Dockar-Drysdale)

Knighted by the Queen (BCA Film)

All drawings and paintings by the author

Every effort has been made to seek copyright permission. The author and the publishers apologise for any inadvertent breach.

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my original editor at Hutchinson, Paul Sidey, and the fine group of theatre photographers whose work appears on the photo insert pages: Henrietta Butler, Donald Cooper, Mark Douet, Jonathan Dockar-Drysdale, John Haynes, Zuleika Henry, and Ivan Kyncl.

P ART I

Now

T HE B OY

M Y FIRST MEMORIES are of shit and love. In that order.

Im aged about two in the first. Its night-time. I mess my bed. It fascinates me. I cup an especially shapely turd in my hands and start towards my parents room. My sister, Verne, aged five, intercepts me. Shes horrified. The object in my hands instantly transforms itself. A moment ago it was marvellous now its foul. I have produced something foul. The shock of this never leaves me. It will recur again and again in my life: me bearing forth some seemingly splendid thing, only to bump into a critic.