 Tall, slim and saturnine, Richard E Grant has never yet cast off the shadow
of his debut cinematic role. The persona of Withnail, scathing, self-obsessed,
booze-and-drug-ridden unemployed actor, in Bruce Robinson's lethally funny 60s
scuzzbag comedy, Withnail & I (1987), seemed to fit him so snugly that it's
coloured all his subsequent career, in much the way that Norman Bates took over
Anthony Perkins and Jeff Bridges has become 'The Dude'; the more so since the
film, no great success on its initial release, has now gained the status of a
cult classic. Despite having acted in near on a hundred other films and TV
dramas (and being, in real life, allergic to alcohol), Grant seems lastingly
likely to conjure up such well-loved Withnail lines as "We want the finest wines
available to humanity. We want them here, and we want them now!"
He was born in Swaziland, as Richard Grant Esterhuysen, in the dying days of
British colonialism - a milieu he portrayed in his first film as director,
Wah-Wah (2005), as drunken, snobbish and joylessly adulterous. He studied
English and drama at the University of Cape Town, where he joined the Space
Theatre Company, before moving to London in 1982. With features that lend
themselves readily to disdain or disgust, and a voice with a hint of
old-fashioned hauteur, he seemed naturally suited to playing villains or
anti-heroes. "No other actor in recent movies, not even James Woods, is better
at creating a repellent, spiteful, vindictive character," observed Roger Ebert.
After Withnail, Grant starred in Bruce Robinson's second film as director, How
to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989), as a scruple-free adman, but the satire was
found crude and heavy-handed.
Since then Grant has established himself as a reliable character actor - the
characters, inevitably, generally being on the unpleasant side - while
occasionally taking the lead, as he did in Alan Plater's adaptation of George
Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1997), and in the BBC series The Scarlet
Pimpernel (1999-2000), showing impressive swashbuckling skills as the famously
elusive adventurer. Costume dramas fit him well: he played Dr Seward (on the
side of the angels, for once) in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (US, 1992) a
waspish New York socialite in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (US, 1993),
a snooty British aristo in Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady (UK/US, 1996), Sir
Andrew Aguecheek in Trevor Nunn's film of Twelfth Night (1996), the head footman
in Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001) and Sir Hudson Lowe (Napoleon's jailer on
St Helena) in Monsieur N. (2003).
Similarly, on television he portrayed the Prince Regent in A Royal Scandal
(1997), Bob Cratchit in the umpteenth version of A Christmas Carol (1999), a
cold-blooded villain in The Hound of the Baskervilles (2002) and a sinisterly
avuncular doctor in the BBC's highly-coloured adaptation of Michel Faber's
Victorian melodrama, The Crimson Petal and the White (2011). His incisive,
measured speaking voice has made him a frequent choice for animations and
voice-overs: among those he's voiced have been Long John Silver in Treasure
Island (1993, 1997), John the Baptist in The Miracle Maker (2000) and Doctor Who
in Scream of the Shalka (2003).
Though Grant has occasionally worked in Hollywood, he professes no great love
for it. "Hollywood is fear-filled," he once remarked. "You only need to be there
when the sun is not shining to notice the grim determination and the need to be
on every billboard." Some of this animus fuelled his first foray into fiction,
By Design: A Hollywood Novel (1999). Wah-Wah, his only directorial outing (so
far), which he also scripted, was generally well received, but the seven-year
ordeal of making it may well have put him off repeating the experience.
Philip Kemp
Autobiograrphy:
With Nails: the Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant (London, Basingstoke: Picador, 1996)
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FILM & TV CREDITS
