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Anthony Sharp

Anthony Sharp was a British actor, theatre director and television actor whose career was firmly grounded in the stage. Born in Highgate on 16 June 1915, he trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before making his professional stage debut in February 1938. With H. V. Neilson’s Shakespearean touring company, he played the Sergeant in Macbeth at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea. Repertory work took Sharp to Wigan, Hastings, Peterborough and Liverpool. Following war service, he resumed his stage career in September 1946 at the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, appearing as Hansell in Tangent. His first West End production arrived in February 1948 with Family Portrait at the Strand Theatre. What followed was a long and varied London stage career. Sharp appeared in productions including Cry Liberty, Who Goes There!, For Better, For Worse, Small Hotel, No Time for Sergeants and The Edwardians. His later credits ranged from She’s Done It Again and The Avengers to Number One at the Queen’s Theatre in 1984. The list suggests a performer equally at home in comedy, contemporary theatre and Shakespeare. The Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park became another recurring part of his career. Sharp played Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing in 1958 and Malvolio in Twelfth Night in 1959. He rejoined the company during the 1970s for plays including Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Man of Destiny, then returned to Malvolio in 1979. Other London work included The Rivals at Sadler’s Wells and She Stoops to Conquer at the Lyric Hammersmith. Sharp’s career was not built around one defining part so much as sustained versatility: repertory, touring Shakespeare, West End productions and repeated returns to classical theatre. Across several decades, he remained a working actor with an unusually broad range of stage experience.