Richard E Grant

Born on May 5, 1957, in Mbbane, in northern Swaziland and very close to the border with South Africa, Richard Grant Esterhuysen is the son of Henrik, a British official in the colonial administration, while his mother, Leonne, was of British descent and german. His childhood was cut short after the traumatic divorce of his parents, an event that pushed him to start a diary, which he continues to write today.

He studied English and Dramatic Art at the University of Cape Town, where he debuted as an actor, as part of the Space Theater Company, from the South African town. He realized that he would have a better chance of succeeding in his profession in the United Kingdom, so taking advantage of his dual Swazi-British nationality, he moved to London in 1982. “There my accent seemed very strange to them. I met the director Charles Sturridge , who had just shot Brideshead Revisited , and he told me that he spoke like 1950s English,” he recalls in an interview.

He made his film debut with Withnail and I , a black comedy now considered cult, written and directed by Bruce Robinson , where he played a young unemployed actor with alcohol problems. It is especially meritorious that he succeeded with that character, since his body does not tolerate even a glass of wine, so in real life he is totally teetotal. The film had a great impact despite its limited budget, which led to being offered jobs in Hollywood, and critics predicting a brilliant career for him. However, he did not finish choosing his projects well, which kept him from stardom. He did a good job on Warlock the Witcher., like the terrifying Giles Redferne, who reappears three hundred years after being sentenced to the stake, but Steve Miner ‘s film was no more than a B-series by-product for the video stores of the time. For its part, the interesting The Mountains of the Moon , by Bob Rafelson , where he played a British explorer, did not quite hit; Nor would Henry & June have much of an impact , where Philip Kaufman reconstructed the relationship between the writer Anaïs Nin , and the couple formed by June and Henry Miller , author of “Sexus”, while the surrealist The Great Falcon, where he played a deranged man who forced a white-collar thief played by Bruce Willis to steal some works by Leonardo Da Vinci , was the biggest disaster at the time of the protagonist of Die Hard .

As a consequence, Richard E. Grant was relegated to an actor with no box office pull, but whose talent was appreciated by prestigious filmmakers who recruited him as a secondary. Thus, the public was able to see him as a screenwriter in The Hollywood Game , by Robert Altman , the rich young man in Daniel Day-Lewis ‘s circle of friends , in The Age of Innocence , by Martin Scorsese , and Doctor Jack Seward, one of young Lucy’s suitors, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola . In 1986 he married voice teacher Joan Washington, with whom he had a daughter, Olivia, and a stepson, Tom, the fruit of her previous marriage.

Since the mid-90s, his career has been in eclipse. From time to time he made brilliant appearances, as a fashion designer in Ready-to-wear , and a footman in Gosford Park , both times again directed by Robert Altman , one of Nicole Kidman ‘s suitors , in Portrait of a Lady , from Jane Campion , father of the girl protagonist in The Nutcracker , by Andrei Konchalovsky , and the film that marked the lowest peak of his career, Spiceworld , where he played the manager of the Spice Girls, the most famous musical group for adolescents.

Despite everything, the interpreter has managed to come back, first thanks to the phenomenon of the series. He embroidered an art historian, a guest of the Crawleys, in Downton Abbey , and despite his brevity, also the actor specialized in playing Izembaro kings, in Game of Thrones . On film, he was Dr. Zander Rice, the main villain of Logan . But above all, the veteran actor has finally achieved recognition with Can you forgive me someday? by Marielle Heller . His work as a loser, who helps sell his ‘stuff’ to his friend, a forger of letters from famous authors played by Melissa McCarthy, has earned him a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor. In addition, JJ Abrams has recruited him for Star Wars Episode IX , causing much speculation from fans about what his character will be. In an interview he assured that he was finally going to reveal who it was, but then he began to make incomprehensible mime gestures.