Antony Sher, the chameleon-like star of the London stage, dies aged 72

With his carefully tuned voice and face that seemed as malleable as clay, he appeared in plays by 20th-century giants such as Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard, and he seems to be drawing those works while breathing new life into the classics. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company since 1982, he is considered one of his generation’s finest interpreters of Shakespeare. The company’s former director, Terry Hands, once likened him to “a welding torch without a handle,” saying, “He lives, eats, sleeps whatever he gets into.”