★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

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

★A human, funny, nakedly direct memoir, beautifully written. --Financial Times

　　This is the autobiography of actor, author and artist Anthony Sher. It offers an insight into his first 50 years. Starting with his time in the sinister paradise of white South Africa, we follow Sher through his time as a rifleman during conscription in Namibia, his feelings of being an outsider and his escape to London. Small, weedy, Jewish and conscious of his homosexuality Anthony found a refuge in art and later theatre. Sher was turned down by RADA and Central but still went on to create a series of triumphs on stage, including "Richard III" and "Macbeth", as well as write novels and a theatre-journal full of his own illustrations. Sher reveals his personal experiences of theatre figures, such as Olivier, Stoppard and Mike Leigh, and the time when his cocaine habit threatened his survival. This is a personal odyssey through the approvals and dismissals, awards and addictions, doubts and dreams which go to make up Anthony Sher's life so far.A remarkably candid autobiography, utterly involving and often startlingly revelatory, Beside Myself is an inspiration to young actors and a treat for seasoned theatregoers.