20/20 Magazine – Issue Number 14, May 1990

Richard E Grant grew up in Swaziland where days can pass in a haze of Happy Hours. He made his name playing an inebriated out-of-work actor in Withnail and I. But alcohol makes him violently ill and the work is now pouring in.

By Matthew Gwyther Photography by Eddie Monsoon

Richard E Grant was off to the bank to repay his mortgage. It had struck him as odd that he was paying over £5 a day in interest when he could could now afford to buy his East Twickenham house outright. It’s hard to imagine Dennis Quaid, Sean Penn or even Kenneth Branagh trotting off to the Alliance and Leicester. But then Grant is not really like them.

In the past couple of years Grant has been directed by Philip Kaufman and Bob Rafelson. But he doesn’t quite fit the film star part yet: “It’s very odd when you’ve read about these people in film magazines for years and then you meet them on a professional basis,” he says. “I still find it slightly unbelievable.”

It’s not long since Grant was serving in Tuttons wine bar in London’s Covent Garden while trying to get his acting career up and running. “I was a good waiter,” he says, “I don’t drink, which is an enormous plus, and I don’t steal. Those two factors ensured that I remained in the job.”

People find it hard to believe after his performance in Withnail and I that he doesn’t – and never has – drunk alcohol; but it is true. “It makes me violently ill. I’ve tried but it doesn’t agree with me.” Six feet two with a sparkling set of choppers and steely blue eyes, he is also quite the opposite of the dishevelled Withnail. So how had he made the character convincing – did he base it on someone? ‘I, er….Let me put it this way, Bruce Robinson (the director of Withnail and I and How to Get Ahead in Advertising) likes a drink.”

Being brought up in Swaziland also helped.

Above: Grant in his latest film, Mountains of the Moon.

“Anybody who’s been to an English colony or protectorate will know that the level of alcohol consumption is enormous. I was in shock when I came to England in 1982 at how little people seemed to drink here. The whole day in Swaziland seemed to be divided up into The Happy Hour. The Cocktail Hour. The Pre-Lunch One.” What of the drugs? Where did he learn of the effects of the Camberwell Carrot, that gigantic reefer Withnail helps to consume in the film? “Swaziland is famous for the quality of the weed grown there and yes, I have partaken of that,” he says.

Grant was born 32 years ago in Mbabane, Swaziland, where his father was director of education in the colonial services. Every now and again you can hear a whisper of southern African in his polished English tones. The young Richard attended the same school as two of Nelson Mandela’s daughters and then went to university 1,200 miles away in Cape Town.

After graduating with a degree and diploma in English and performance, Grant co-founded the Troupe Theatre Company, which worked from Athol Fugard’s Space Theatre in Johannesburg. They struggled on for a couple of years before the idealism died and the enthusiasm, along with the money, ran out. “I had a terrible disillusionment about what I had to offer as a white leftie performing to other white lefties and liberals,” says Grant. “The problems of that country were so overwhelming and I didn’t foresee the system would change at all. I wanted to get out. And there was a fair dose of ambition to have a go at the big time.”

So Grant moved into a Ladbroke Grove flat and, at the Electric Cinema on the Portobello Road, started catching up on the more esoteric Films he hadn’t been able to see in Swaziland. He hadn’t done badly in Africa, though. In a “bug house” of a cinema or at the drive-in down the road, during the early ’80s, Grant had steadily worked his way through A Clockwork Orange, Cabaret, The Godfather, all the early Scorseses and even Last Tango in Paris.

A spell of backstage gofering for Jonathan Miller at the Donmar Warehouse helped get Grant an Equity card plus an arbitrary vowel to fit in the middle of his name – the union already had one Richard Grant on its books. He then did some theatre in Regent’s Park before landing a role in Les Blair’s television play about an advertising agency. Honest, Decent and True, far and away the best dramatic treatment of a profession under excessive scrutiny during the 1980s. Grant played Moonie Livingstone, an affected art director into all things Japanese.

Les Blair’s methods of rehearsal and shooting were unlike anything Grant had experienced before, or since. “Les fostered this sense of paranoia in the cast. Nobody was allowed to speak to anyone else outside the improvised sessions about who the character was or anything. It was perfect for creating an advertising agency. The night before we started filming, Les told us what the story was going to be. We rehearsed for an hour in the morning and then shot it.” Immediately afterwards, Grant took a part in a Vauxhall commercial. “It wasn’t alcohol or cigarettes – a harmless way to spend a day for an enormous sum of money.” And he wasn’t to see much of that for a while.

On stage in Tramway Road (1984). He was nominated as Most Promising Newcomer.

“I’d done Honest, Decent and True at the beginning of 1985 and then I was nominated as Most Promising Newcomer for Tramway Road at the Lyric Hammersmith. I foolishly assumed that as I had had a good television break and something in the theatre, a job was bound to come along…..nine months of unemployment followed. I wrote a play, painted and decorated, did odd jobs. You never think it’ll go on for as long as it does.” Thoroughly depressed, at the end of 1985, Grant and his then girlfriend, the voice coach Joan Washington, went their separate ways for six weeks at Christmas. Grant headed for Swaziland, Joan for Scotland. He proposed to her and was accepted at 5am in the arrivals hall at Heathrow. They now have a one-year-old daughter, Olivia.

Grant’s professional salvation came in the form of Bruce Robinson, whom he likes to call his fairy godmother. Robinson wanted Daniel Day Lewis to play Withnail in Withnail and I but Day Lewis chose instead to take the lead in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Robinson still didn’t want to see Grant, but eventually gave him five minutes. They are now good friends. Robinson – at the moment moodily trying to plot a thriller for the “teenage turnips” in America – remembers Grant’s audition. “He wasn’t that good but there was something boiling away there. Richard is quite mad, a bit behind the door.

“I was very strict about the way in which I wanted the lines said,” continues Robinson. “We did a month’s work on them before shooting. But Richard lived or died on his performance. He didn’t resist any risks in that film and really put himself on the line. Every now and again he’d say. ‘Oh, fuck I’m going to appear like a complete cunt if I do this, Bruce’; but he did it.” Grant admits he was terrified of the effect Withnail and I might have on his career. The film, after all, appears slightly short on plot. “I was paranoid that the film would really be the end of it. Nobody could sit through an hour and a half of a man ranting and raving in a drunken state and I was done for. They wouldn’t blame the writer, they’d say ‘That’s old slab-face’s fault.’ Mind you, at the time I wouldn’t have minded playing drunks for the rest of my life if it meant still working. But it worked out fine. And it has always struck me as ironic that playing an out of work actor has led to all this work.”

Robinson offered Grant the role of Dennis Dimbleby Bagley, the manic ad man with the talking boil in How to Get Ahead in Advertising two weeks into shooting Withnail and I. Robinson is the first to concede the film didn’t really work.

“When I watch it now, all I can see are the mistakes,” he says, “We only had 33 days because we had no money. Withnail and I is an incredibly honest film. Advertising wasn’t.” Try as hard as he did. Grant was unable to carry it.

Robinson would like to work with Grant again – “I’d love to have a crack at a play for him. I love his rage. The voice I hear when I write, Richard can articulate. I can’t. I was an actor but a bad one. If I have an argument at a dinner party, I ruin it with the delivery. I always wish Richard would say my words. What Richard needs and deserves is a major part.”

“Bruce is very territorial,” says Grant, “Anything that I do that isn’t with him barely warrants his consideration. It’s a joke between us. We share exactly the same sense of humour and maybe the same sense of anger. But he’s ten years older than me. I certainly don’t have fantasies about decapitated members of the royal family with their heads on stakes lining the Mall.” Grant is also writing a thriller at the moment in his first proper break between acting roles for several years.

Robinson persuaded Grant to spend some of the Withnail and I money on a very fast car – he himself has an Aston Martin DB4 convertible. Grant, however, is uncharacteristically coy about the car he bought. “I can’t tell you.” Not a Porsche? “No.” Is it English? “Stop. stop! I’m not going to tell you!” Oh, go on. “No. It’s not important. It would sound awful. It doesn’t go with being a 98-pound weakling.” Robinson says it’s “some Jaguar”.

All Grant’s film work since How to Get Ahead in Advertising has been American. Released this month is the Bob Rafelson film. Mountains of the Moon. which deals with the trip made by the explorer Richard Burton to discover the source of the Nile in 1860. Grant plays Laurence Oliphant, a publisher and the Machiavelli of the story. Oliphant succeeds in driving a wedge between Burton and his buddy adventurer, John Speke, played respectively by Patrick Burgin and lain Glen, on their return from Africa. Grant is suitably nasty.

Rafelson. who is a bit of an adventurer himself, has previously shied away from dealing with non-American subjects and Mountains of the Moon, despite some accomplished photography in its African scenes, suffers from the problem of being an English subject dealt with by American directors and writers. He found Rafelson good to work for and, “kind of loose. The ’60s were very much his time.”

The film that Grant made with Philip Kaufman, Henry and June, is about the affair in 1932 between Henry Miller and Anais Nin; the latter’s diary recording the event was held back until after her husband’s death in 1985. Grant plays the cuckolded American banker husband.

“Kaufman said he wanted to work with me, but having seen me out to lunch in Withnail and I he wasn’t sure if I could do it. I don’t know if it has worked. We’ll see,” he says. More recently. Grant has been signed to star with Steve Martin in a new film set in Los Angeles. It will be directed by Mick Jackson, a self-confessed Withnail fan.

With the outlook for British films as dismal as usual. Grant wouldn’t mind doing some theatre work. It would mean staying at home÷although with the sort of wages the theatre offers, it wouldn’t make his agent happy. “At the moment, it’s just nice to be at home with the baby,” he says, “and without having to worry about the wolf at the door and the bank manager peering through the letter box.

Mountains of the Moon opens in London on April 20.

As the perpetually drunk actor in Withnail and I (above with Paul McGann) in 1986.

Cut Magazine – 1989

By Kirsty McNeill

Best known for his manic performance in ‘Withnail & I’ as the poverty stricken, pill-popping, out of work thespian, Richard E Grant has again teamed up with writer/director Bruce Robinson to play Dennis Dimbleby Bagley, the successful enfant terrible of the advertising world in ‘How To Get Ahead In Advertising’.

With a serious deadline looming and a major creative block in progress, Bagley is suddenly struck by the revelation that his is a vile profession, motivated by greed and manipulation. He decides to rid his designer lifestyle of all traces of advertising, but discovers to his horror that he has already been contaminated, and is growing a foul-mouthed jingle-spouting boil on his shoulder to prove it.

It’s a fast and furious black comedy, with a razor sharp script, while Bagley is a dream of a part for an actor. Embracing the role with obvious relish, Grant is on screen in practically every shot. He brings an offbeat, left-of-centre presence to the role, with his skinny body and twitchy face. And he bristles with considerable comic talent.

The idea for the film had been with Robinson while shooting ‘Withnail & I’, and he obviously recognised the characteristics he was looking for in Grant.

“He thought he’d found a like-spirit to go ranting off the deep end with!” says the actor. “He has a very sardonic outlook on life and humour, as you can tell from his movies, it’s obviously something that I’m tuned into, and we’ve become great friends as a result. I realise that there’s a risk of the thing being a incestuous remake of ‘Withnail & I’ – you’ve got a dominant central character, played by the same actor, with the dialogue in the same style, by the same director. But God, the amount of dross that’s around: I’d run far to do what Bruce is attempting.”

Leaning back on the sofa in his comfortable home in quiet, leafed Twickenham, Grant is relaxed, charming, measured, and, well normal. He doesn’t drink, smoke or display any of the eccentricities of his onscreen persona. How did he maintain the level of frenzy that the role required?

“I suppose if you do it 15 hours a day, over a period of nine weeks, a kind of momentum builds up. Because I’d worked with Bruce before, he knew how far he could push me, and then some! As a director he does push absolutely right up to the edge, and over, and then chooses. So although it sounds completely uncontrolled, it’s not. If something’s gone to one extreme, he’ll say: ‘Right, just another couple of notches further up,’ and you either go or you don’t.”And I don’t find it difficult to restrain myself in that direction!” he adds with a wicked grin.

Although he gives the impression of being quintessentially English, Grant grew up in Swaziland, where his father was Director of Education. He then went to Cape Town University, took a degree in drama, and set up a theatre company.

“It ran out of steam after two years. I knew absolutely that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in South Africa: six years was more than enough. It was an extraordinary and interesting place to be, but the politics are omnipresent, whether you avoid or confront it. When people talk about free speech in England – well, compared to South Africa, it’s a different idea of freedom. Don’t think for a moment that I’m condoning what this Government has done; I don’t at all. But relatively, it’s easier for people here.”

Accordingly, Grant packed his bags and headed for the motherland in 1982: did some stage work, found a small role in ‘Hidden City’, and landed a part in the TV drama ‘Honest, Decent and True’. Then he met Bruce Robinson, who was casting for ‘Withnail’, and he hasn’t looked back since. Something of a movie buff, he prefers film to theatre work.

“I enjoy the process of doing movies. I get nervous, chronically so on stage, but movies are concentrated in different ways. The reality seems more tangible. You get to travel and the money’s good.”

Grant had his first encounter with Hollywood when co-starring with Julian Sands in ‘Warlock’, a daft piece of hokum in which Sands and Grant – as Warlock and Witchhunter respectively – are inexplicably whisked off from 17th Century Massachusetts to battle it out in modern day LA. Dubbed ‘Highlander meets The Terminator’, the film has been a surprise commercial success. As if the tacky special effects and dreadful Olde English dialogue weren’t enough, there’s Grant’s appalling Scots accent as well.

“Did you think it was bad? Well, my wife is a dialogue coach from Aberdeen so she’ll be very taken aback to hear that.”

Your co-star Julian Sands is used to turkey; what with ‘Siesta’ and ‘Gothic’.

“Your words,” he offers, “I haven’t seen them!”

Did he enjoy the opportunity to ham it up?

“God, I can see it in bold type:- ‘He enjoys hamming it up!’

You know the moment you’re actually saying lines like ‘God’s well-besmeared tarting hole’ you’ve got to galvanize every ounce of sincerity and conviction that you can. Believe me, you’re earning your money.”

No slouch, Grant can also be seen earning his money in two more productions in the near future. ‘Killing Dad’, the first film from Scottish Television’s new film production off-shoot, is a small scale, low budget comedy of circumstances from first-time British writer and director Michael Austin.

Grant plays a hair tonic salesman in a cast that includes Denholm Elliot, Anna Massey and Julie Walters. Then there’s Bob Rafelson’s ‘Mountains of The Moon’, a grand scale piece about 19th century explores Sir Richard Burton and John Speake on their epic search for the source of the Nile.

“It’s love, death, friendship, loyalty, ambition, greed, Empire – all the big ones. I play a sort of childish shit called Lord Oliphant who is in love with Speake. People are saying it’s going to do better business than ‘The Last Emperor’.”

And what of Robinson?

“Well we have talked about doing another film together. In fact, Bruce has spoken of doing Hamlet.”

Hamlet?

“As a black comedy,” he grins. “I play the Dame!”

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.”

Here is the rather amusing hospital scene from How To Get Ahead In Advertising, starring Richard E. Grant as Dennis Bagley.

[pro-player image=’http://www.richard-e-grant.com/Multimedia/Films-TV-Theatre/Scenes/HowToGetAheadInAdvertising-Scene.jpg’]http://www.richard-e-grant.com/Multimedia/Films-TV-Theatre/Scenes/HowToGetAheadInAdvertising-Scene.flv[/pro-player]

Sky Magazine – 1989

“I’ve got a tombstone-slab length face, receding hair and a 98lb body that gets sand kicked in its face,” says actor Richard E Grant, cinema’s latest sex symbol. “Honestly, it’s comical!”

Comical or not, the fact remains that Grant’s first feature film role, as the outrageous alcoholic actor Withnail in Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I, proved him to be remarkably magnetic and talented. Still, he jokes about being second choice after Daniel Day Lewis. “Thank heavens he went off to The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” says Grant. “If I’d messed that up, I wouldn’t have deserved another chance.” As a direct result of Withnail – the 32-year-old Swaziland-born actor is starring in four films released this year. In Warlock, out this month, he plays a 17th century hero who arrives in the future to pursue a deadly warlock (Julian Sands).

In How To Get Ahead in Advertising, out this summer, his second feature for Robinson, Grant plays an advertising executive who has a talking boil on his neck. “It’s a tale of the late 80s yuppie man taken to an extreme of greed and lust.” His other forthcoming appearances are in Mountains of the Moon and Killing Dad.

But work takes a back seat to his baby daughter. Though happily worn out by parenthood, Grant still finds energy to be amusing and amiable. “I thought about having a nose job,” he laughs. But my wife (dialect coach Joan Washington) said, ‘The day you don’t get work because of your nose, then you can have your nose fixed….”