Antony Sher

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

When I am on a long run in a play, I'm not sure how I would fill the days if I did not paint or write. On a basic level, it just stops me going crazy.

My grandparents all came from Lithuania to South Africa.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

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

I love playing outsiders, I always do.

I'm always very proud of belonging to three minorities: gay, Jewish, white South African.

As a gay Jewish white South African, I belong to quite a lot of minority groups. You constantly have to question who you are, what you are and whether you have the courage to be who you are.

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.

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.

I have no cynicism at all.

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

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