Beside Myself

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

'I wish I'd 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 author's 60th birthday, includes a new foreword and epilogue.

'The most unsparingly honest actor's autobiography I have ever read' Michael Billington, Guardian

'An extraordinary work of self-exploration' Irish Times

'A human, funny, nakedly direct memoir, beautifully written' Financial Times

'Fascinating... No praise can be too high' Sunday Times

'A masterclass. Any student or young actor could learn a great deal from studying Sher's extraordinarily thorough modus operandi' The Stage