A Life In Pictures
Richard E Grant not only made a film of his diaries, he kept a diary during filming. By Barry Didcock
There are two things everyone knows about Richard E Grant - he was born and brought up in Swaziland and he starred in Withnail & I, the funniest British film of the 1980s. There’s a third thing they should know - that he is a compulsive diarist with a waspish tongue and a keen eye - and a fourth they will soon learn, namely that the 48-year-old actor recently went behind the camera to turn his tumultuous colonial childhood into an autobiographical film.
The movie, Wah-Wah, is out in June and Grant’s new book, The Wah-Wah Diaries, covering the period of its slow and painful gestation has just been published . The actor will be in Aberdeen next month to talk about it all - and introduce a sneak preview of the film.
We meet in a plush central London hotel on a sunny spring day. Grant arrives wearing white cotton trousers, sleek-looking white trainers and an Indian cotton shirt. It’s warm but not that warm and the effect is a little rock-starry. Tall and nut-brown he would not be an easy man to miss even in a room full of Kidmans and Clooneys. He sits down, sips his cranberry juice and starts to talk. “Not exactly tropical, Aberdeen, is it?” he says. He should know: his wife of nearly 20 years - voice coach Joan Washington - is from the Granite City.
For Grant, writing a diary is a means of keeping his feet on the ground when faced with some of the excesses of his profession. Whether describing two un-named Gosford Park co-stars as rutting stags or recounting a meeting in Paris with Emmanuelle Béart (”She tells me straight off the blocks that she has never heard of me”), his style is self-deprecating and humorous.
“When I got to know Carrie Fisher while I was living in Los Angeles, she said to me, ‘You’re no longer a tourist, you’re now one of the attractions,’” he tells me. “I accept that rationally but emotionally I still feel that I’m on the outside looking in. I think that’s very common to anyone who’s emigrated. So, keeping a diary, for me, means there’s a part of my brain that still thinks I’m going to go back to Swaz one day and open a pineapple stall by the side of the road… The diary is essentially me pinching myself and saying, ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me.’”
To read the rest of the article (courtesy of Sue W), just click here.