ANTONY SHER, one of the most acclaimed Shakespearean actors of his generation, has died, the Royal Shakespeare Company said Friday. He was 72.

Sher had been diagnosed with terminal cancer this year. His husband, Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Gregory Doran, took leave from his job to care for him.

Born in 1949 in Cape Town, South Africa, Sher moved to Britain in the late 1960s to study drama. He joined the RSC in 1982 and had a breakthrough role in 1984 as the usurping king in “Richard III.”

He went on to play most of Shakespeare’s meaty male roles, including Falstaff in the “Henry IV” plays, Leontes in “The Winter’s Tale,” Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Iago in “Othello” and the title characters in “Macbeth” and “King Lear.”

Sher also performed with Liverpool’s innovative Everyman Theater and at many of London’s main theaters, getting his first West End starring role as a drag artist in Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy.” He won the 1985 best-actor Olivier Award jointly for “Torch Song Trilogy” and “Richard III.”

Sher’s last role for the RSC came in 2019 in South African writer John Kani’s “Kunene and the King.” Sher played a veteran actor diagnosed with cancer, looked after by a Black South African carer.

Kani, who starred opposite Sher, said the two men had been “comrades in the struggle for a better South Africa.” (SD-Agencies)