Actor, author and artist Sir Antony Sher, 60, was born in South Africa and moved to London in 1968.

My partner

Greg [Doran, chief associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company] is a rock I cling to. He is a huge stabilising factor and although ten years younger than me, is much wiser, emotionally and intellectually. We make one another laugh and love the same things, including Shakespeare.

My three siblings

I was a solitary child and felt out of place in South African society and at home. But as I grew up, I valued my family more, when I previously took them for granted. Living as far away from home as I do, the link my family provides is vitally important, and for each of the big occasions in my life – when I received my knighthood, when Greg and I had our civil partnership and for my 60th birthday – my siblings have flown out to be with me, and that means an enormous amount.

My drama school principal

The acting classes my parents sent me to when I was a teenager completely liberated me. I could cure my shyness by becoming other people, and acting became a very heady drug. I came to this country to train as an actor and Ralph Jago accepted me at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art after I was rejected by the top two drama schools. When you are starting out you don’t realise how certain people can make decisions that will affect the rest of your life. He made one of the biggest, creating my career.

My new art teacher

Art has always been a passion of mine, but anything I knew was self-taught. Last year, when working on an exhibition for the National Theatre, I used the art studios at the King Edward VI School in Stratford, where David Troughton is the art master. He helped and advised me and it was revelational. I bristle with pride when he compliments my work.

My first psychotherapist

Monty Berman was a Jewish South African whom I started seeing in 1982. Because he had such a similar background to me, he could teach me about the society I was a product of, as well as about myself. I was finally able to embrace aspects of my identity which at first I hated – my gayness, my Jewishness, my South African birthplace. Suddenly, I understood things that troubled me my whole life, and this scary, troublesome and dark world became bright.

Sir Antony Sher appears at the Chichester Festivities on July 5 (www.chifest.org.uk). His autobiography, Beside Myself, is published by Nick Hern, £10.99

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