Beside Myself

A remarkably candid autobiography, utterly involving and often startlingly revelatory, Antony Shers Beside Myself is an inspiration to young actors and a treat for seasoned theatregoers.

I wish Id read this book when I was starting out. Not only is Antony Sher one of the all-time greats of classical theatre, he also manages to be a writer of enormous skill and insight David Tennant

Actor, author, artist Antony Sher grew up in the Old South Africa with a profound sense of being an outsider. Small, Jewish and secretly gay, he found refuge in theatre and escaped to London aged just nineteen.

In Beside Myself, Sher takes us to the heart of what it is to be an actor today, describing the journeys he undertakes in order to inhabit the roles for which he is famous – including The History Man (his TV breakthrough), Macbeth, Tamburlaine, Cyrano, Stanley Spencer and Richard III.

This edition, published to mark the authors 60th birthday, includes a new foreword and epilogue.

The most unsparingly honest actors autobiography I have ever read Michael Billington, Guardian

An extraordinary work of self-explorationIrish Times

A human, funny, nakedly direct memoir, beautifully writtenFinancial Times

Fascinating... No praise can be too highSunday Times

A masterclass. Any student or young actor could learn a great deal from studying Shers extraordinarily thorough modus operandiThe Stage