Antony Sher Quotes

Life is just more comfortable if you're honest and open about everything. I spent so many years being in the closet about one thing or another.

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.

The effort of learning. It's the same when you approach any new skill or technique, from a dance step to driving a car. The effort of learning stops you, at first, from doing it well.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

I have a Woody Allen Jewish attitude to life: that it's all going to be disastrous. That it hasn't all been that way is simply down to some random quirk of fate.

I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.

Every play I do, every book I write, every painting I paint, I will struggle with. I don't know what it's like for a project to come easy.

A lot of good actors tend to be quite introverted as people.

If I could write a letter to my teenage self I'd probably say something like: "You ain't gonna believe what will become of you."

I was a weak kid, not good at what all the boys at school were good at and I found that by acting, by being other people, I could liberate myself from those inadequacies.

I'm a complete technophobe. I can't even email.

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

I love the mixture that's in me. It makes me me. And that's why it's such a shame that people waste energy in denying who they are.

I'm a huge fan of David Hockney. I love the way he keeps reinventing himself.

My grandparents all came from Lithuania to South Africa. My first novel, Middlepost, is a fictional account of that journey.

I believe deeply in therapy. There's no one in the world who wouldn't benefit from it.

I love playing outsiders, I always do.

I was never built to play the hero. Physically or emotionally... And they're not as rewarding to play. At least for me.

The whole of my acting career is a bit of a mystery to me.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

I feel so sorry for younger actors who aren't able to have the opportunities that I had, starting out in repertory theatre. It's really tough on young actors now.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

It's good for actors to confront those things we have to act: panic, pain and death.

Ciss says, 'People have less emotions than actors think they have. For much of the time we hide our emotions, we haven't time for emotions. Our brains work so much faster than our emotions.