Film Review Magazine – December 1989

By Esther Eley

The film crew may have done all they can to make their film as polished and original a finished article as possible, but in the public’s eyes the most important thing to know is who’s in it. It’s the names that gets bums on cinema seats. And one of the most significant is that of the male lead.

A successful male lead must have ‘star quality’. Hollywood is as good as ever at preserving this for its favoured crop of leading men by simply keeping them enigmatic enough to ensure movie-goers keep coming back for more. Star quality on these shores may be a bit more difficult to define – as witnessed by the rise of latest male ‘heart throb’ Richard E. Grant.

Grant is someone who’s made it not on the romantic allure of his characters but on the sheer energy of his performances. Oddball film characters litter his recent credits – a manic alcoholic in Withnail & I, a schizophrenic ranting adman with a talking boil growing out of his neck in How to Get Ahead in Advertising, and a venomous, father-hating son in Killing Dad.

Currently he is preparing for his role as author Anis Nin’s American businessman husband in Henry and June, the latest film from Philip Kaufmann, director of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

But although Britain is the cornerstone of his success, Grant is actually from Swaziland. He took a combined BA arts degree in English and Drama in Cape Town University, followed by four years’ theatre training’ he also co-founded a theatre company there.

Actually launching yourself as an actor is no easy business. “When I first came to live in London permanently, which was eight years ago, I didn’t have an agent. And, because I hadn’t gone to drama school here, I didn’t have any background contacts. So I literally bought The Stage newspaper and looked up the auditions they were having,” he says.

Most actors make their way into film via theatre and television. Grant wised up after chatting to other actors attending the cattle-call theatre auditions, learning that the best way to be noticed was to produce your own lunchtime play. This he did at the King’s Head pub theatre in London’s Islington. He then supplemented his acting work with a few waitering and decorating jobs.

A lead part in a satirical TV film called Honest, Decent and True, which ironically was about advertising, led to his being taken on by a top film casting director, and eventually to his break role in Withnail.

Grant comments: “If I look at the careers of any actors, there always seems to be one thing that’s the break part, the part that’s going to make or break you. And certainly I knew that if I got Withnail, even if the film wasn’t a success, it was such an extraordinary film that, if you even half pulled it off, something would happen.”

Since Withnail, Grant hasn’t had to go banging on people’s doors but, unlike some actors, he doesn’t begrudge reading for parts. “I like to do that because then they find out whether you’re vaguely suitable for the thing, and you find out whether they can direct. So it works both ways,” he says.

Testing can be a grueling experience, as Richard explains: “You meet at a hotel or a so-called neutral place and you usually see other actors you recognize sitting around in the foyer. All these scenarios come into your head. The ‘shall I leave now before I go in?’ sort of thing.”

But if you’re successful at it, you’ll have the anxiety of trying to survive countless recalls.

“On Withnail I had the most. I went back and forwards for two weeks. I was at a disadvantage because I had no name, they were casting a complete unknown. And, although it wasn’t a big budget thing, they would have preferred to have at least somebody who was known.”

Once a part is his, Grant undertakes all the usual research and preparations, digesting all the information available about his character.

“All sorts of things can inspire you about something – music, pictures or whatever. But I have a very practical attitude to it in that I think you find out who the character is by learning the lines. That’s when something happens with the character; when it’s coming out of your mouth, your thought processes change.”

And learning lines presents no problems for Richard, who prefers to get his memorized beforehe gets to the set. However, he has encountered many professional actors who appear to do no apparent damage to their health by learning their lines on the set while waiting for the next scene to be shot.

“My nerves would cave in if I had to do that”, says Grant.
Rehearsal time will vary from director to director and from film to film, with more time necessary for the more dialogue-oriented films. And certain scenes will need more rehearsing than others. Withnail & I opens to a scene of interchanges between the two lead characters (the other played by Paul McGann) in the setting of a squalid Camden Town flat, where the washing up has been left so long it could walk out of the kitchen.

“That was the scene we rehearsed more than anything, every single day, and it only lasts maybe four minutes of the film. But the whole history of these two characters has to be in that scene. So that was painstaking. Director Bruce Robinson was very disciplined about that and drove us mad but it was worthwhile in the end because when it came down to shooting, we knew exactly where we stood and who we were.”

Exactly how much guidance will an actor want from a director?

“I find it useful when they give as few but as pointed notes as possible, rather than piles of notes. The director may decide that every take should try to be as different as possible from the last one to give variety, and so he’ll keep throwing things at you which you have to react to.”

“Because you have the lottery of having numerous takes on something, it gives you the luxury of trying something different, and the director and the editor have the choice of what to use.”

“Sometimes they don’t know what they want until you do it. It’s my experience that directors mostly know what they don’t want and, offered different things, can decide what they do like.”

How does an actor go about getting the timing and intonation of the dialogue right?

“Just by saying it or acting with someone until you believe completely what you’re saying – and I think that transmits.”

What about movement and mannerisms of a character?

“You find out that the rhythm of somebody’s speech, whether they speak slower of faster than you, affects the way you walk, talk, sit, eat, what you do. So if the script’s only halfway decent, all of those things become implicit the more you work on it.”

“I’ve never consciously made a list of funny walks or tics or whatever. They are things that develop, and very often they come out of situations. I don’t drink or smoke so obviously that was something I had to get round with Withnail.”

Grant, like many actors, likes to contribute ideas about his own and other characters to help bring their parts to life. Different actors may have contrasting ideas about a scene and a differing understanding about the characters. This can create conflict or it can bring a new creative flow to a scene.

Shooting provides a fresh source of excitement and some very long periods of waiting for actors.

“I never find the feeling of nervous apprehension that I have done in the theatre. I know a number of actors who find filming a completely unsatisfactory way of working because you don’t have the follow-through of having the beginning, middle and end of a performance. You’re doing a moment to moment thing. But I think it’s an enormous luxury to work in that way. And demanding as well, because if you’ve got to be hysterical, or very calm or whatever, you’ve got to be it at that moment. You can’t build up towards it; bang – you’ve got to be in there.”

Sustaining a performance to hold the attention of the audience by bringing variety to the part while remaining faithful to the character is no easy achievement when contending with disjointed shooting schedules.

Arriving at the right pitch for the particular point in the story is another concern for the actor.

“For the Withnail part, because he’s drunk for so much of the story, I made charts of the varying stages of drunkenness. Then I knew that, say, on the fourth day he wasn’t so drunk, or that he was blind drunk, so that I’d know straight away what level of drunkenness to try for.”

The viewing of rushes of that day’s shooting is something many actors prefer to avoid, fearing it may alter their performance. Grant doesn’t feel that way.

“I find it a form of reassurance and you can try and objectify about what is and isn’t working. I’ve never found that I’ve got up the next morning and felt tongue-tied or self-conscious because of it.”

Once the shooting is completely under wraps, is it hard to switch off from the character an actor’s spent weeks playing? Richard says it can be.

“Because my part in How to Get Ahead in Advertising required such a state of dementia for hour upon hour every day for nine weeks, I wasn’t aware I was coming home and being a pain in the neck, if you’ll excuse the pun. But my wife was enormously relieved when the filming was over, put it that way.”

So how does Richard E. Grant want to see his career develop from here?

“I want to keep acting in movies because that’s what I like doing. I want to have as much variety as possible and not just play a string of alcoholics. But there are some parts which absolutely fit you, which you know in your bones are exactly the right part for you to play, that something else is always going to be a stretch.”

Acting being an all-involving job, how do actors behave when they’re not working?

“It’s very difficult. You feel like you’re treading water. As much as you try – I read as much as possible and I go to the theatre incessantly – you always feel the time between jobs is a sort of a twilight zone.”