Richard E. Grant

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0:02

Hi, come in. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis. Richard E. Grant.

0:53

Thank you. Bellafroud.

1:03

Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes?

1:05

Well, because I'm on your sofa on the psychiatric couch. I put on my confidence pants, which are the bell bottoms that I had in my last year of School in 1975, and the platform shoes that I wore then to my school leavers dance. And I've kept them because I'm a hoarder. I think sounds a pejorative term, but I find it hard to throw things away that I love. So I thought, well, as is it clothing? And you'd probably be asking about stuff in the past at some point. I'd wear this. So the bottom half of me is 1975 and the top half of me is approaching 75.

1:10

That's very good. I'm so impressed that you can wear the trousers you wore when you were 15.

2:01

Oh, I bet you could.

2:07

Maybe.

2:09

I'm sure you haven't changed shape.

2:10

No. Yeah, you're probably right. In fact, it's something I think about sometimes. It must be so weird to dramatically change shape, especially as a woman. You go from being this little twiggy thing and suddenly you've got all these breasts and ass and curves and things.

2:11

Lovely.

2:33

I never got. I stayed. But you're a world famous actor and a brilliant writer and people will go to a movie because you're in it and other actors love you too. And at an award ceremony, Paul Rudd knelt in front of you and I wondered, how do you handle a compliment?

2:35

Badly. I've just winced, when you said these things that you just very kindly said. Of course, you know, you long and crave to hear these things, but when it's said to you, you die of embarrassment at the same time. And I think that it's this combination, which is a contradiction that I've come across in almost 99% of actors that I've worked with of having large ego, saying, give me the job over somebody else, and really low self esteem, which for civilians I think is hard to comprehend because you think, well, this person looks so confident they could stand up and speak in front of 2000 people or take their clothes off and snog somebody on a screen or whatever. But that imposter syndrome and feeling that you're not worthy enough or that you're not talented enough, is that doubt sits on your shoulder or certainly on mine every single day. So it's a kind of putting your confidence pants to go out there and, you know, pretend that you're not thinking, I'm not up to this. Does that answer your question?

2:56

Yeah.

4:18

And in fact, are you good at taking compliments?

4:19

I'm the same as you. I. Well, you said something in, in one of your books about, I think it was the Hollywood Diaries where you were talking to someone who you liked a lot, and then you suddenly started paying compliments and being a fan, and you said the compliment, and then someone came up and did it to you. And the compliment conversation leads to a dead end because the person isn't able to respond.

4:23

Exactly.

4:54

And you're stuck there.

4:54

This happened in 1991. I was doing a film for Robert Altman called the Player. And Winona Riley was 19. She came up to me at this party. Everybody in the room was famous. And because she had been, I think she was living with Johnny Depp at the time, who was Withnail. And I obsessive and knew every line of dialogue. She started quoting Withnail to me and was saying, oh, I've got to work with you. And Coppola's Dracula is going to happen, and I'm the lead. And you know, you have to. I'm sure you're going to be in it. And across the room I spied Barbra Streisand, who I have been, I have idolized since I was 12 years old. And so as I was having fan smoke blown at me by Winona, all I could think about was, shut up, There's Barbra Streisand. That's who I want to talk to. And then when I had a conversation with her, with Streisand, I realized exactly what you said, that it was a cul de sac, because this person means so much to you, and you're telling them, you know, how much they mean to you. And of course, the other person is looking back thinking, who the hell is this? Get them out of my sight as quickly as possible. So it is a weird. Yeah. Contradiction.

4:56

Yeah. Because you had such an extreme experience of childhood. When you were 10, you woke up asleep in the back of the car to see your mother having sex with your father's best friend. And after they divorced, you lived with your father who tried to shoot you when he was drunk. And you said, go ahead. And I wondered, where did you get that? I mean, I. Where did you get the courage? But is that courage? And what was going through your head when you said, go ahead?

6:14

Well, my father had not been a big drinker. And I find this out from. I've straw polled a whole bunch of people that knew him really well prior to my mother leaving him. So when he then flipped into drinking a bottle of Johnnie Walker every single night for the remaining 13 years of his life, as I discovered on his deathbed, unrequited love for my mother, the insanity of seeing this very charming, well read, erudite, delightful person by day turn into this. As the grandfather clock in the drawing room went 9 o', clock, there would suddenly be this personality switch into something that was unrecognizable. And so when he tried to shoot me after I had emptied 11 and a half bottles of his scotch down the sink of the scullery, he. He, you know, tried to shoot me, but he was so drunk that he missed and he tried again and it was wavering. And I just said, at this moment, go on, do it. Just get this over with. I'm. It's a kind of outof body experience where the person is. He was so intent on blowing my brains out that I thought, well, just, you know, just do it right now. Just, you know, get it over and done with.

6:48

Incredible.

8:20

So the point is, you're not in a rational state of mind.

8:21

Yeah. Because he described you as an overwhelmed clock as a child.

8:23

He did? Yeah. Oh, my God, you've done all the research.

8:31

There's also. He. You've talked about getting close to someone as establishing a slag fest.

8:35

Yeah.

8:42

And was that something you practiced as self protection with your father?

8:42

Well, it's this weird thing that happened that when, from the age of 11 onwards, when he got drunk or before he was, you know, became really violent, he would talk about everybody, all the adults that we, you know, were our friends, and he would say, oh, yeah, Bella Freud. Well, and then he'd give you this poisonous, toxic outpouring of what his drunken version of what Bella was, and then the next day would say, well, we've invited Bella for. She's coming for A barbecue this weekend. But you said these. So being taken into his confidence and him telling stories about all these adults, and I was friends with all the kids, formed this kind of, I realize, in retrospect, a weird kind of emotional intimacy that I suppose because being an actor, it's the perfect profession for that. Because inevitably, when you're on the makeup train at five o' clock in the morning and somebody's half an hour late or they don't know their lines or whatever, it's very easy to fall into a kind of slag fest where you say, oh my God, did you see the state of Bella? Well, she was up all night. Yeah, she was glastonry. She was, you know, she was shagging. So and so that you go into this and it is a repeat of that kind of somehow camaraderie that you feel that is behind closed doors. And then of course, when the person, when Bella comes in, you go, hi, Bella, how are you? You know, how is Bowie's, you know, performance on the Glastonbury stage or whatever? And you. So it seems like you're being two faced and I suppose you are, but then somebody pointed out that everybody talks about everybody and it doesn't mean that you can't still be friends or love that person.

8:47

Yeah, that's a good point.

10:59

Because it's just human nature. It seems that. I suppose the most extreme person I know like this is Rupert Everett. And I said to him, rupert, I always walk out of the room backwards after I've had a meal with him or any encounter, because I say, rupert, I don't want you to stab me in the back while I can see you. And he said, oh, darling, I never do that. And I said, rupert, I know you do that because I've done it to everybody that I've ever known since I've known you, and I've known you for decades. So I always wore any jewelry. Rather I walk out of the door backwards so that I can't see him going. Do you think this is true about what people do? That everybody talks about everybody?

11:00

Well, some people more than others. But what you've described, I recognize that from my own father. You know, this closeness that you feel, it's a currency. And he was so good at describing people in this kind of devastating way. And I would practice so much. And I remember being on the bus with this friend of mine when I was a teenager, about 15.

11:45

Yeah.

12:13

And saying, making some comment about some anonymous person walking past, and she said, God, you're perverse. And I thought, shit, you know, I free. You know, I sort of got too into. Felt so powerful and so like, you had so much agility when you were just disseminating somebody.

12:14

Yeah.

12:37

But then I found you end up quite stranded with. No, because no one comes back in the end. They're too. They don't. It's. I suppose it's a bit boring after a while when someone is just relentlessly slagging someone off.

12:38

Oh, yeah.

12:59

But when it's funny, it is just delicious as well.

12:59

It is delicious.

13:04

Yeah.

13:05

Her daughter and I have this. I mean, it happened this morning. She saw somebody and I said, how irritating out of 10 is that person? She said, the way she walks, her hair, her clothes, her dog, like Thor, bang. Somebody that's totally anonymous. And in that moment, there's. There's emotional connection or intimacy that you have with another person. We just go. I know exactly what you mean. So.

13:05

And it is a bond, isn't it?

13:39

Yeah, it is a bond.

13:40

Because you're writing about.

13:42

Doesn't always have to be negative.

13:44

No, no, it's.

13:46

Well, if you just find somebody funny, you think, oh, my, look at. Look at that person over there.

13:47

Yeah.

13:53

So you think that everybody does it?

13:54

I don't think.

13:56

Do all you guys do it?

13:56

Everybody does it. Do you do it?

13:57

You do, Everybody does it.

14:00

Well, my son is. He doesn't do it. And he's.

14:04

How old is he?

14:07

He's 25. And I.

14:08

He doesn't do it.

14:10

No, he doesn't really think he does.

14:11

So he's a saint.

14:13

Yeah.

14:15

Bring him in here. We'll do it.

14:15

I think he's mildly amused, but he's also a bit sort of disgusted by this sort of reverting to always that. And, you know, I know I'm really judgmental and he isn't in that way. He's very discriminating. He notices everything, but he just doesn't seem to get the glee. I think some people do it more mothers. And there's something. When he said he didn't really enjoy that, I noticed I couldn't really get a laugh after a while. But when he does make a comment about something, it's really weighty. You know, his very small, critical sort of noticing. It's much more potent than my relentless stream of

14:18

piffle.

15:21

Yeah, exactly. Because you're writing about people's appearance is very evocative. And you described the director, Stephen Poliakov, as wearing a collapsed tweed jacket and fucked corduroy pants. And someone is having a crisis of beauty, which was so specific. And I wondered how important language is to you.

15:22

God, you've made my wince at the thought of someday taking umbrage.

15:49

That's very good.

15:55

Because I grew up in a country that didn't have television. So books and the BBC World Service on the wireless, as we then called it, they were the way out. Or the one movie house that we had, one cinema that was the way into the world beyond the tiny country that I grew up in, Southeast Africa called Swaziland. So reading has been a lifelong. I read about four books a week, and I've got piles next to my bed and flip between whatever mood I'm in or what has grabbed my attention more than something else. So language has been. And words have been, you know, I realize, incredibly helpful and important for me. And the other thing is that if you're born as skinny as I was, I was called rib cage when I was at drama school, because when I was in my leotard for movement, you could cancel my ribs. So I was called ribcage. And so always being skinny, words were the way that you could fight back if you didn't have the muscle power, which I've never had. So giving somebody a put down in words and then being able to run fast, that combination was my sort of fight or flight mode. So words have been. And I'm astonished when. When people. I've been into some people's, you know, where they live, and they don't have a single book, and it's. It's. I find that really weird.

15:59

Mm. Yeah.

17:40

Have you ever come across that?

17:42

Yeah, I did know someone who didn't have any books, and it really hurt, you know, because an intelligent person, but it seems to have not crossed their mind to read anything. Such a blissful way to pass time.

17:45

Yeah.

18:03

Because you've talked about being attracted to addicts and your father, and with Nel and I, director Bruce Robinson, both addicts. And it seems like you had the good fortune to meet your wife, Joan Washington, who counterbalanced your traits as the child of an addict. And I remember the reading. The first time you tried to withhold and sulk, she called you out in this major way. And was that a relief?

18:04

It was astonishing because my mother was an Olympic sulker. And for the last nine months of her marriage to my father in 1967, she didn't talk to him. So she'd say, pass your father the salt and flick this salt cellar across the dining room table. Ask your father for the car keys. You know, it was a kind of passive Aggressive, you know, you end up being the piggy in the middle as a child. And I learned how powerful it was if you sulked and withheld. So you know, of course I didn't have any self awareness about that. But when I sulked for the first time when I was with Joan, she called me up on it. She said, are you sulking? She said, if you are, you better snap out of that very, very quickly because I won't stand for was the first time anybody had actually just trip switched me on that. And our daughter still says, oh, you think that you don't sulk at all. But she said, yeah, you still do in your way, but not in the same way of just shutting down and not speaking to somebody for a long time. So she called me out on that and it was so hilarious that she said, you know, never going to do that with me again.

18:35

It's so, it's so brilliant. It was so striking because you know, growing up the way you did with these two very dysfunctional people and to have this miracle of somebody who absolutely stopped you from going down this rabbit hole, which is such torture being the sulker and the withholder as well.

20:09

Have you sulked?

20:34

Yeah, I mean that was my strategy again, like being skinny. Words and, and withholding felt powerful but yeah, always are alienating and you know, the drinking, the poison chalice and everything and the behaviors that you get left with from being in that milieu. Something to kind of regulate your feelings.

20:35

Yeah.

21:01

And it's so self destructive. So when, when I read that I thought how, you know, God put this woman on earth for you to have this wonderful kind of escape route from what could have been waiting for you. It was very, made a big impression. And she also described you as an erotic hot water bottle. Pretty good compliment. Compliment. And did you know that's what you were capable of being before you got together with her?

21:02

No, because I had. God almighty. You have. I'm sure you can see how deeply I've blushed at this.

21:38

That's brilliant.

21:49

I'm gonna stay here for the next 70 years. No, she, because I thought that because my parents divorce was so bitterly acrimonious, I, you know, I, from the age of 10, I thought I'm never going to fall in love, I'm never going to get married, I'm certainly never going to have a child. And then of course when I was 27, all of that got flipped because I did fall in love for the first time. I thought I'd been in love before, but I'd Never fallen in love in the way that I did with Joan. So that was so revelatory that I suppose, as I'm sure you know from falling in love, you feel like you're being seen for the first time completely and utterly in the most transparent way. And that no matter what your faults or foibles are, you're being invisibly held by. By that love. So that was life changing and saved my life, really.

21:51

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23:04

Because just before you got the lead in with Nell and I, you were seriously considering an advert saying wanted boy dancers in Dubai. No experience necessary. Bruce Robinson envisioned Withnail as a character whose background was aristocratic, but whose life was deeply rooted in rejecting the establishment through his clothes. And did those clothes influence how you went on to dress? Such good look. That long coat. Wearing that long coat with nothing underneath when you're covered in all that weird cream.

24:40

Deep heat.

25:21

God, it reminded me so much of someone I used to know who is dead. Of course, yes,

25:22

you know, because it was set in 1969 and the. The clothes that I wore were designed by the costume designer Andre Gaylor. I didn't then buy a whole bunch of Edwardian coats to wear in real life, so. But I have Because I'm very tall and because I have got coats, inevitably there's, you know, some. At one point somebody said to me, oh, are you wearing the coat from. And I said, no, it just happens to. The same silhouette applies. No, I don't. I don't think it has not to my conscious knowledge influenced the way I

25:30

dress because I. I saw with now when it first came out and it seemed completely normal to me to be like that. You said, never before or since have I read something that conveys what is going on in my head. So accur. And how do you deal with extreme feeling? Because you don't drink or take drugs and you obviously feel things deeply.

26:18

God. How do I answer that? I don't know. I think that because, you know what you pointed out earlier, that because my father was an addict, I've been attracted. Enjoy the company of addicts because there is a. In my experience of them, there's a sort of heightened everything about them.

26:47

Yeah.

27:12

Do you understand what I'm saying?

27:16

They're the best people.

27:17

Yeah. So it's very charismatic and addictive to be around people who are addicts.

27:19

Yeah.

27:24

So I can remember I was on during the rehearsals of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula in 1991, the Napa Valley, staying on his estate. And Anthony Hopkins said to me, you're one, aren't you? And I said, what? And he took me aside and he said, you're an addict.

27:25

Gosh.

27:47

And I said, no, I'm not. He said, well, you have the personality of a dry drunk, white knuckling.

27:47

Wow.

27:54

And I said, wow. And I said, no, I'm physically allergic to alcohol. I find out when I'm 16, had a blood test, no enzyme in my blood. And he said, well, your personality is of somebody who is. So, yeah, I answered your question.

27:54

That's so interesting. He felt the affinity with you. But then, of course, people can be addicted to people and, you know, behead certain behaviors. And certainly from what you described, being the child of an alcoholic is it sort of sets you up with a certain, as you described, a kind of fight, flight and freeze. That's very particular.

28:18

Yeah. And the element of, I suppose, fight and flight, fight or flight, is that there is always danger in the air.

28:43

Yeah, yeah.

28:53

And when you're with an addict and you're eggshelling along, never knowing, you know, what could. Suddenly that thing is, in its own way is very addictive. Because when I had psychoanalysis when I was 42, felt like I had a nervous breakdown. This analyst, absolutely brilliant Man Christopher Bolas said to me, do you realize that you are kind of addicted to drama in any situation you will seek it out or just instinctively be drawn to stuff where. Whereas the calm, placid, you know, Mojave desert of it all is of no real interest to you. And I thought, well, that's absolutely right. Guilty as Char. So I'm in the right profession for it.

28:53

Yeah. Because what you were saying about the low self esteem and big ego of actors is such a characteristic of addicts as well.

29:49

Absolutely. Bullseye.

30:01

Yeah. God, it's so interesting. And I just was constantly struck with reading, when I was reading A Pocket Full of Happiness, how you. These things that are normally destructive kind of, you know, electrical faults between people, how you and Joan seem to complement each other. And when you describe being saying if you, if you sleep with someone else, I'll kill you. I thought it was just so adorable. So you managed to keep this incredible charge and with a trust, which is very, very unusual. And you had this famously happy marriage for 38 years until your wife tragically died of cancer. And you describe painting Joan's nails in when she's ill in bed. And I was so touched by that. And you were like a girlfriend as well as a husband.

30:02

Geisha. Geisha Grant. I was. That's what she called me.

31:16

Oh, that's so, so lovely. And where did you learn to paint? Paint nails?

31:20

Well, I paint anyway, so I painted all my life. So painting nails or painting rooms, you know, it's just a smaller version and it is such, I realize that it's such an intimate thing to do for somebody and when you both know that one of you is dying, that doing a home spa version of just manicuring and looking after somebody makes them feel so much better and their self esteem is enhanced. And you know that you're not going out, nobody's going to see these nails or you know, how your hair has been blow dried or whatever. But it, I saw the, the effect was so, so much larger than the small act of, of doing it, of her pleasure in that, that it became something that, you know, I did regularly.

31:26

Yes.

32:33

With her.

32:34

It's so inspired because of course you could have called someone to come over,

32:35

you know, by the time in the last few months of her life, she didn't want to see people because she had so many steroids. Because her lung cancer had had subsidiaries that went to her brain.

32:42

Yeah.

32:57

And in order to control the brain tumors, she was given steroids which made her face puff up. And so she didn't want to be. She didn't want to see people, understandably. Whereas her nails and her hands and her hair, they stayed the same. So in focusing on those, you could, you could somehow bypass, you know, the. What is happening to her face. Wise

32:57

then there's a lot of questions about with now because there's so much source in there and it was so evocative of that time. And we're similar ages.

33:26

No, you're younger than me a tiny bit.

33:40

But for the with now physique, you were requested to lose a stone. And is there any psychological support provided for actors who have to lose or gain weight? Because it's pretty challenging. It's much more so I'd imagine, than even an intimacy scene. It's so such a drastic old, you know, change of your identity.

33:43

Well, the thing is, what happened I. I've been unemployed for nine months in 1985 and I'd read in a magazine because I spent all my time in W. Smith looking through Free magazine, you know, looking freely through the magazines. And I read that if you're 6 foot 2 and you weigh this amount, you should weigh 12 stone and have more muscles or whatever. So I went to Dreas Reineker who had this body studio in Notting Hill Gate and he transformed Christophe Lambert into Tarzan. So he took me on and over 10 months I. I managed with weight gain powder and doing this training to actually be, you know, 12 stone. And I still look skinny. So. And Bruce Robinson said to me when he gave me the part, he said, well, you're too fat. You've got to lose a stone in weight. So I went, I called Gary Oldman who I'd done this improvised film for the BBC called Honesty's and True. And I said, how did you lose your weight for, you know, playing s Vicious. And he told me that he lived on tuna fish and melons. But then I think he almost got hospitalized or did get hospitalized at some point. So I went back to boots, got weight, weight loss powder and was on these milkshakes for 10 days and lost a stone and a half. Pre Ozempic. So that was. Yeah, that's what happened. But there was no. There was nobody that gave a tinkers about that said you should have some psychological assessment about what you've done to yourself.

34:08

But is there not that now?

35:51

Because I think there is now.

35:53

Yeah.

35:55

Yeah. I know that Christian Bale has gained and lost weight, I think almost more than any other actor that I can think of. So I don't know whether I only Worked with him once on Portrait of a lady in 1995.

35:56

Oh, yeah.

36:08

I didn't ask him at that point because he was very shy about his

36:09

weight gain and loss issues because it is very destabilizing. So I was curious about that. But you have this ability to bring an anarchic, outlandish humor to many of your roles, like the father and Saltburn. And it's always exciting to see what hilariousness you're going to bring to a sort of normal situation. And in your very first TV drama, when you were watching it with Joan, she says, oh, you're funny. And I wondered if that's when you realized you. You were funny. I think it was before, before with now, wasn't it?

36:14

I hadn't. I hadn't. You. I, you. You know, from school, if people think you're funny or not, or you're popular or you're not. So the very small group of people, they got my humor. And I suppose because it's, you know, what we talked about with my father and being an addict and all of that, it is not polite funny about stuff. It's fairly acidic. Yeah. So, yeah, when she saw me in something and identified as, oh, you're funny, that I was more surprised that she had only just sort of clocked that.

37:02

Oh, right.

37:47

That makes sense.

37:49

Yeah, it does. It does, I suppose is. Do you think there's a difference between being funny and then being able to act funny? I mean, obviously you're incredibly talented, but it is. It's a real thing, the way you. You play it straight. And it's.

37:50

So that's the key.

38:10

Derangingly funny.

38:11

Yeah, but that's the key. Because Bruce Robinson said during the rehearsals, the 10 days of rehearsals we had for Withnail, he said, the moment you and Paul McGann play this and telegraph that you think it's funny or that you know it's funny, it's dead in the water. So he said, you've got to play the reality of these character situations. They don't see any humor at all in what situation that they're in. So you have to play it dead straight and then it's funny. So that was a great lesson, really. So I owe him that.

38:13

Also, you have this expression on your face, which is. It reminds. Reminded me of children under 10. This. This utter outrage and demand. It's so charming and adorable and the whole combination is just totally.

38:52

I'm laughing because I'm obsessed with traitors. Have you seen it?

39:14

I haven't seen.

39:20

You haven't.

39:21

I Want to see it?

39:21

Okay.

39:22

You're the one person in this entire country that has seen it.

39:23

And Claudia Winkleman sometimes wears my clothes on it. And when she does, they fly out of the shop. And so I'm hugely grateful and love traitors, but I haven't seen it.

39:25

Well, the point about traitors.

39:38

Have you been on it?

39:39

No, but I daughter said after you watched the Current series, she said you could never go on traitors because you'd be thrown out or killed or banished off. The first day. I said, why I love traitors? She said, because you are incapable of hiding what you feel about somebody or something on your face for more than half a second. So you would be just exposed and outed instantaneously. So that's so funny. That reminds me of what you just talked about, this thing of the outrage of a child on your face.

39:40

Very endearing. It's so good. You talked about this crisis at 42. And you mentioned that the psychoanalyst said that you needed to reconnect with your mother. And you said. You described having this realization that all secrets are toxic and deciding to focus on honesty, which is quite a delicate line to tread. Honesty. I mean, it's supposed to be so good, but it can go wrong when it's not really honest, you know, when it's telling someone. But I wondered how it affected your other relationships.

40:20

I think that you've. What I mean by that is that because having grown up in a household where everything had to be under lock and chain, secrets, my mother's adultery, my father's alcoholism, FA la. So I have been. I've gone the opposite extreme because I find it very difficult to be medium and calm and Jimmy like about things like your son, it's either black or white, all or nothing. So. And that's all my school reports. So I am absolutely the conviction that if you are transparent about everything and honest, that becomes in itself your armor.

41:07

Yeah.

41:58

Because if a tabloid newspaper is going to come and turn your life upside down, if you've already owned what it is or been open about stuff, then what is there to go on? They can't come and knock on your door and say, oh, yeah, your father said this, or your wife did that or whatever, or you did this. But in terms of how delicate, you're absolutely right about. You try and live as honest. I try and live as honestly as possible. But you have to be considerate about the failings of other people and not. If you're being judgmental about it, you can't tell them Straight out. How bad. You can't say to somebody, your breath is like an open grave. You've got to give them, you know, tree bowl mints in advance. Or say, have you been to the dentist lately? Or you've got to find a way to do it. But you. You know, I feel compelled, like George Washington. You know, I cannot tell a lie, so.

41:59

But do you think you can ever tell anyone they have bad breath? You've singled out the one thing that's. Maybe no one can really do anything about it.

43:12

Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Because I found out from every. If I've ever met a dentist or my own dentist, I've said, is it. How proportional is it of bad guts? And they said 99 of it is, you know, lazy. Oral hygiene. So you can fix it. Floss, brush, whatever it is, but don't be a manky old box of maggots.

43:22

Open graved mouth.

43:56

Have you ever kissed somebody and you thought.

43:58

Yeah, once it happened, it was the most shocking thing. Certainly gets you out of the room as fast as possible.

44:01

It unites a cast very quickly. If somebody really. Oh, my goodness, that person has got breath. Breath on them. It's hilarious as well,

44:15

because your mother, she. She. She apologized to you on her deathbed read, which is amazing. Unheard of. What a. What an exciting.

44:29

I disagree with you. I don't think it is unheard of because I think that when this is what Christopher Bolas.

44:44

Yeah.

44:51

Psychoanalyst said to me. He said that after the age of 70, people where you know that you've got far less future ahead of you than you have past behind.

44:51

Yeah.

45:01

That the ghosts, unless you're a psychopath and the demons of your misdemeanors in your life come to squat on you and you want to make good. You want to repair or be forgiven or whatever it is. Make reparation. So the fact that my mother, you know, I was able to talk about having witnessed this stuff in the backseat of the car, which she didn't know about. I think it was a great relief for her. And it led to a rapprochement with her, which I was very grateful for.

45:02

Yeah. What a wonderful thing to happen. It changes everything. Sort of changes the past as well

45:38

as the future, changes the past, changes the power dynamic of a relationship. And, you know, forgiveness is an incredibly powerful self.

45:45

Yeah.

45:59

That, you know, fixes the punctured tire.

45:59

It really does. And it. In an abstract way, it doesn't make any sense, but then when it happens, it has a. This complete neural change. In your system.

46:03

And it's the closest feeling that I've had to when people talk about a religious conversion or a religious moment. Epiphany mine was that when. When my mother said three magic words to me, please forgive me, which I never ever thought that I would hear from her.

46:13

How those revelatory, marvelous, yeah, really something.

46:35

Support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. If you're listening to this show, then you probably don't mind living in the discomfort of not knowing, holding two contradictory ideas and resisting the urge to collapse them into something simple. That's where the interesting stuff lives. That's the same kind of thinking that Claude was designed to do. In my experience, Claude helps me organize my life. I prefer to spend my time being creative and Claude helps me manage the administrative tasks that so often get put off. I use Claude to file old emails, sort through threads and get organized quickly so I can spend less time managing admin and more time creating. And anthropic committed to not running ads in Claude. So when I'm working through something, my questions aren't clouded by pop ups screaming click here. Now try Claude for yourself for free at Claude AI Fashion Neurosis.

46:40

And going back to your mad crush on Barbra Streisand your whole life.

47:50

Yeah.

47:56

And you wrote to her when you were 14, was that right?

47:56

Yes.

48:00

And invited her to stay in Swaziland. And then when you finally met, you got on incredibly well. And what is it about her that you've find so attractive?

48:00

Well, I think she's incredibly beautiful. She has amazing colored eyes, beautiful hands, voice of an angel, and she has so many contradictions in the planes of her face. And has an astonishing talent. So the combination of all those things. And I first saw her in Funny Girl when I was 12 years old and she was playing this part of a woman who is, you know, trying to make it in show business based on the life of Fanny Brice. And so all that aspiration of trying to. Trying to make it was so. And that yearning was so embedded in her, you know, amazing performance. So that chimed. And then when I was teenager, I saw her in what's up Doc? In which she had long blonde hair and tight tank top and bell bottom jeans. And I was in the middle of my hormonal storm adolescence. So I just thought, well, this is it, marry me now. And that, you know, you're supposed to get over these adolescent crushes once you hit your 20s. And I said to Christopher Bolas, the psychoanalyst, I said Am I emotionally arrested as a teenager that I have not been able to? He said, no, as long as it's not hurting anybody, that's absolutely fine. But he said, yes, probably is a form of arrested development in some way. But my daughter said to me last night, she said, well, you waver from being about 5 and about 17 and not much older than that. I said, yeah, but I'm a year and a half off 70. And she said, well, yeah, biologically, but she said, emotionally, you are still there. I'm always amazed when people don't have crushes on somebody or manage to get over them. Say, oh, yeah, I used to have a crush on so and so, but mine is ongoing. And Joan said to me, I think just a month before she died, she said, well, you know, after I'm gone, if Barbra Streisand becomes available, would you make yourself known? And I said, what do you think, my darling? So, you know, that hasn't changed. Yeah, it hasn't changed.

48:12

It's nice that you're so constant in your affections. I mean, that seems a wonderful True north star. Yeah, yeah, that's great. It's so much fun having a crush anyway. So.

50:49

Yes, because it's. It. The beauty of it is that it's unrequited and it's one way. So there's no, there's no equivocation or anything about it. And you know, if somebody says, well, you know, I've heard of this about her, or, you know, this person is better looking or that person's, you know, more talented or whatever, it's just like, yeah, move on. Like when. When that brilliant moment in Bridesmaids where she walks out of the shop and they've all got chronic diarrhea. She's in a wedding dress, she just slumps down into the middle of the road and she just goes, yeah, drive on, drive past. That's what I feel. When people denigrate anything about my obsession with Babs, move on. I don't care.

51:03

It's a great resource in a way, because I suppose if you feel a bit down, you can think about Babs, you know, and it's a kind of.

51:57

Not only think about. Listen to her, you know, put it on. Headphones in my car, I suppose. 24 hour access.

52:03

Yeah.

52:11

Which you never have in real life with the person that you are actually in love with. You know, you don't have that.

52:11

No, it's true. It's a very good point.

52:18

Obsession on tap.

52:21

Yes. Because also you said that you'd love to work with Quentin Tarantino if you had a chance. And I wondered why he was the chosen one,

52:22

Tarantino, because. Well, first and foremost, he's a writer, so.

52:36

Right.

52:41

His use of language and then his combination of the music that he chooses in his films is so particular and unique to him that I thought, yeah, if I could. If I could have a chance. But I think he's only making one more film, so.

52:41

Yeah, there's still one.

53:00

But to live your life in, in a dream of thinking, well, I haven't, you know, I haven't been to Epidaurus yet, or I haven't been in a Quentin Tarantino. Knowing that it'll never happen. That in itself is like, you know, carried in front of the old donkey. I like having those things.

53:02

What's your favorite of his films?

53:19

Do you have. Do you like him?

53:23

Yeah, I like Reservoir Dogs still, more than anything.

53:24

More than the others.

53:27

Yeah.

53:28

Well, I've watched Once Upon a time in Hollywood nine times.

53:29

Oh, my God.

53:32

Because his. Leonardo DiCaprio and the writing of that character, of what an actor goes through and what they feel, and this imposter syndrome is so touching and hilarious at the same time that I never. I never tired. Tire of that. Django Unchained, Inglorious Bastards. Yeah, a lot. I'm pretty deeply in there.

53:33

Yeah. God. Well, I hope you're in the last one. Definitely rush to see it.

54:02

I'm not.

54:07

Is it cast?

54:08

Yeah.

54:09

Oh, God.

54:10

And I met him and I told him, I said, I've seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood six times. Yeah, yeah. But every actor does that. You know, halls. You have to pause to the cause.

54:14

And you work. You walked for Burberry last year and appeared in their campaign with Naomi Campbell. And you said. I was astonished to be asked at my age.

54:26

Yes.

54:37

But you seem a natural for that. I can't believe you haven't done it, because I. You seem to have always had a. An association with fashion. Even if that's the feeling, you seem somehow connected to it. And I remember seeing you at Vivienne Westwood's funeral as well, and.

54:38

Oh, I loved her.

54:57

I know. How did you know Vivian?

54:58

Well, because Robert Altman cast me in Pretaporte, which turned out to be a disaster in 1994, and I was playing the male. Fashion designer. That and all her collection of that year were what my character in the story was supposed to have designed. So I spent hours and hours with her.

55:01

Yeah.

55:25

Talking and getting her tape recorded, everything about her life. And then she gave me this tiny Tricorn hat with a veil which I then wore to her memorial service.

55:26

Yeah, which.

55:40

What you're talking about.

55:41

Yeah.

55:42

And I saw her subsequently a few times and I. She was so, again, singular and decisive about everything and her opinions were so, you know, there was no sort of Mount Rushmore granite about them. So that was. That was my connection to fashion at that point.

55:43

And what was it like walking in the show? Because it's quite a thing, isn't it?

56:09

Well, what's amazing about being in the show is I asked. I walked in the Burberry show and then Miucci Prada asked me to walk in her Miu Miu show two months ago and wearing a leather apron and clothes from workman's clothes from the 1950s. So you don't have to learn any lines. You don't have to. You wear one outfit and you just have to walk. And the only rule is that you're not allowed to smile, which I found very. I could see people that I. You knew, some people in the. Sitting around, you know, along their lines and, you know, you instinctively want to get high or something. You just have to, you know, po. Face along. I look like an undertaker's assistant, you know, if I don't smile because I have a very long face. So that was the biggest challenge of it. But I loved it. And being surrounded by all these literally 18, 19 year olds who, you know, didn't know me from a bar of soap and they're all, you know, their lives are all a hell of them and what they were talking about. I really enjoyed all that. Do you think you'll do more if I'm asked?

56:14

Yes. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, you're a natural. Really, it's a good. Such a good idea. Do you ever work with a stylist? Because you go to events and you always look distinguished in a very particular way.

57:28

Oh, thank you.

57:45

Wear a roll neck and a velvet jacket and stuff.

57:46

Never worked with a stylist or had a publicist or any of the entourage of people that so many other actors I know.

57:50

No publicist?

57:59

No.

58:00

Wow.

58:02

Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong.

58:02

I don't think you're doing anything wrong. That's fascinating. If you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction?

58:04

It certainly makes me question them. I was pretty gobsmacked when I watched that interview that you did with a man who was promoting socks with sandals. And you said you're prone to that, that you like that look. I Find it horrifying. And I think that on a girl, my daughter says that I'm foot obsessed. And I think because of where I grew up, where I was barefoot when I was a boy, and because it was so hot, you saw people in sandals a lot. And when people were newly arrived on contracts from England, and their feet had been liberated from the cold, I saw some of the gnarliest, most misshapen feet that I get. I sometimes can remember people's feet before their faces. So if you said a name to me, I'll remember what their feet looked like first. So that's so good. The idea of plates of meat, feet with bad feet or socks and sandals are passion killer supreme. So if I. Yeah, if I saw an absolutely beautiful woman, and, you know, I know that this is genetic, who had extreme hammerhead bunions, the attraction would be instantaneously killed.

58:20

Right.

59:55

Which tells you how superficial I am. But you can have surgery to get your feet fixed, and I know people who've done it very successfully.

59:55

That's good to know.

1:00:05

Just don't put them in sandals.

1:00:06

Well, Rosalia, she. She was on fashion neurosis and said that a man's feet, if she. If they took off their shoes and socks, she saw their feet too quickly. Yeah, that was it. It was over.

1:00:09

Over.

1:00:25

And she said, show me your socks. I want to see your socks. It was so lovely. It was so funny. It really took me by surprise.

1:00:26

Are you like that? Do you never want to see the feet until things have evolved?

1:00:37

I haven't thought of that. I think English feet are so bad in general. You kind of just build them into your sense of normality. So there are. There are lots of other things, though, that I find repellent.

1:00:42

What. What do you find repellent? Apart from breath?

1:01:02

I really don't like skinny jeans that cling to the calf. I find that in com. It's like my wiring goes completely mad, and I just want to go out of the room and come back and it's over. You know, something's changed.

1:01:07

Not that calf liberated.

1:01:23

But then there's also the thing of trying to find a way to get over it so that you can continue because you're not quite ready to be repelled.

1:01:25

Yeah.

1:01:36

And that's always the disaster.

1:01:37

What's your view of boob tubes?

1:01:39

Oh, I think they're adorable. I mean, they're so weird, and I think they're horrible. Oh, really?

1:01:42

They remind me because everything's flattened here, and then you have this bump, but it's. I just Wanted to pull them off or cut them or say have a strap or something. But I think they look absolutely horrendous.

1:01:50

I mean, I've never worn one, but I think there's something incredibly sexy about the way they. The breasts are holding up this band and it's like, what's going to happen? It's quite precarious. And then you're completely fixed on their bosoms and can't stop. I mean, they're so mysterious breasts anyway, aren't they? That anything that attracts your attention to them. I think,

1:02:05

I think a boob 2 is a disservice to the beauty of the breast.

1:02:35

Right?

1:02:38

Yeah. Tongue be turned off. Socks and sandals and a boob tube.

1:02:39

Okay. That's it.

1:02:45

I mean a U turn out of the door, pronto, presto.

1:02:46

And what about being naked? How do you feel about being naked?

1:02:51

Uncomfortable. Do you feel comfortable being naked?

1:02:56

I have to wear something to be naked. I don't like to be without anything. So if I've got one thing on, it denotes nakedness and it goes.

1:03:00

Oh. So do you wear something when you go to bed?

1:03:12

Oh, God, so many clothes.

1:03:16

I'm always cold, so I wear nothing. I couldn't bear sleep in a bed.

1:03:19

It's wonderful. I'd love to be like that. But I wear pajama socks and I have a hot water bottle and then I have an extra blanket to sort of weight me down.

1:03:23

But why don't you just put the heating up?

1:03:34

Which I do, but then I can't. It's the. I wake up and I can't sleep properly, so I need you.

1:03:36

But that's an extreme. If it's set at 22 or 23 degrees, then you can walk around without your clothes on.

1:03:42

It's. It doesn't. I've tried. It doesn't work.

1:03:49

Okay. But going back to the body confidence thing, it took me a year, I think it was a year before I could walk around without my clothes on in front of my wife. Yeah, I found it. I've always found it, you know, self conscious or thinking, you know.

1:03:53

Yeah.

1:04:11

Too skinny. Stick insect like you didn't, didn't feel confident about doing that. But then I. Then I did.

1:04:11

I'm sure it took me longer than that, if not my whole marriage.

1:04:19

So. Thank God for clothes. I know they're the best. Hide everything.

1:04:26

Yeah.

1:04:33

And give you shoulders where you have none. Muscles where you have none.

1:04:34

That's the beauty of great design. It can, it can change your proportions

1:04:39

and

1:04:46

then it kind of makes you get to accept your body. You start from the outside and then eventually you end up with some pleasure in it because suddenly I don't know about you, but I find, I think, oh, it's not so bad at all, you know, why so exacting. But it has taken a very long time. Well, thank you so much, Richard E. Grant, for being on Fashion Neurosis.

1:04:48

I thank you very much for having me.

1:05:20

Could talk to you for the rest of my life, I think.

1:05:23

Oh my God.

1:05:26

Thanks again to Anthropic, the team behind Claude for supporting this show. If today's conversation left you with questions about what someone said or the story behind something they mentioned, that's exactly the kind of thing you could take to Claude. You pull a thread and it follows you down it. No rush to tidy it up. Try Claude for free at Claude AI fashionneurosis and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

1:05:45