Shelley Rubenstein talks to British national treasure Richard E. Grant about his love of travel and bumping into celebrities en route.
Richard E. Grant, 68, is an actor and writer, best known for his breakout role as the eponymous eccentric drunk in Withnail & I, despite being allergic to alcohol in real life. His filmography includes How to Get Ahead in Advertising, The Age of Innocence, Spice World, Saltburn and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, for which he earned BAFTA and Academy Award nominations. In 1986, he married Joan Washington, a dialect coach, who died of lung cancer in 2021. They have one daughter, Olivia, 36.
We filmed Withnail & I in the summer of 1986 and with my £20,000 fee, I bought an old red MG sports car, married Joan and honeymooned in the Seychelles. I learnt to scuba dive and was utterly seduced by that tropical paradise.
In 1989, six weeks after Olivia was born and I’d done three films in a row, we began restoring a farmhouse in Provence. We spent the next 33 summers there, swimming, cooking, playing badminton, scouring every brocante and the antique fair in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. On Mondays, we’d drive down to Nice for the antique market, lunch at Castel Plage on Promenade des Anglais, swim all afternoon, then feast at La Petite Maison in the evening before driving home—their black truffle baguettes are sublime. I was first taken there 25 years ago by Elton John and have been a regular customer ever since.
I tried going back to Provence on my own after Joan died, but found it too painful being there without her. With a very heavy heart I sold the house. Since then, unbound by holiday-home responsibilities and ties, I have travelled all over: to Turkey, Greece, Morocco, Scotland, New York, Spain and India—mostly solo, which I’m used to doing as I film on location so often.
When my luggage got lost in New York 30 years ago, I resolved to only travel with hand luggage thereafter. It’s easier for boys, I know, but if you roll everything up tight, it’s a doddle and you never have to wait at the baggage carousel, or get stopped at customs. Even when I was on a job for three months, I managed with carry-on only.
Last summer I visited Italy with Olivia and we stayed at Borgo Santo Pietro in Tuscany, then I went solo to the Bulgari in Rome, Grand Vesuvio hotel in Naples and Hotel La Palma in Capri, where I met up with friends who happened to be anchored in the bay. While sailing along the Amalfi coast with them I stopped off at Lo Scoglio restaurant for lunch and discovered David and Victoria Beckham at the adjacent table—I know Victoria from the Spice Girls days and the Beckhams came to a charity screening of Withnail & I that I hosted at the Odeon Leicester Square some years ago. Later, docking in Capri, I ran into David Furnish on the pier.
I grew up in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) in Southern Africa, where my father was director of education during the country’s British protectorate. We’d regularly drive 132 miles to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique, where we would eat piri-piri prawns and spend summer holidays on a lagoon up the coast at San Martinho in Bilene.
My father was awarded a Carnegie grant to lecture on African education around the USA for six months in 1964, ending with a holiday in London. I lived with my godparents in southern Eswatini while my parents were in the USA, and then, aged seven, I flew on a BOAC plane to Heathrow to meet them. We stayed at a hotel in Richmond, owned by former Swazilanders. Having never seen a television, I avidly watched Flower Pot Men featuring Bill and Ben, fed pigeons in Trafalgar Square, visited Peter Pan’s statue in
Kensington Gardens and spent a day at the funfair at Battersea Park, riding the Big Dipper.
For my 21st birthday in 1978, when I was midway through university in Cape Town, my father gave me plane tickets to London. I worked at the Royal Swazi hotel over Christmas to save for the six-week trip. On arrival, I bought the most expensive seat—for £5—to see A Chorus Line at Drury Lane. I slept on the floor of a friend of a friend’s bedsit in Chelsea, ate every meal at the Stockpot and clocked up 72 plays and films in 42 days.
I determined that I would emigrate to the theatre capital of the world as soon as I finished my course. I watched Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ian Charleson, Richard Griffiths, Diana Rigg, John Gielgud, Patrick Stewart, Alan Bates and Albert Finney on stage, little knowing that one day I would get to work with all of them.
When preparing to direct my autobiographical film Wah-Wah in Swaziland in 2004, I urged the French producer to secure work permits at least a year in advance as no one had ever filmed there before. She failed to do so and four days before we were due to start shooting, exhorted me to “call that fat old Swazi”—referring to the Minister of Tourism—to beg permits for a cast and crew of 100 plus. I was carpeted at 8:30 a.m. by a justifiably incandescent Minister who yelled that there was no possibility of filming. An agonising 12 hours later, I was summoned to meet with the King to beg clemency. I was invited to sit beside His Majesty on a matching throne, whilst the Minister sat traditionally shoeless on the floor before him. We were given a merciful 11th hour Royal reprieve to begin work as scheduled and charged a hefty fine. The power of an absolute Monarch never seemed so sweet!
I took Joan and Olivia to visit Swaziland for the first time in 1995 and we stayed in open-sided grass roofed huts replete with an open-air bath on the Mkhaya Game Reserve. Within half an hour, our then six-year old, stripped off and ran around barefoot like I had done as a little boy. Rediscovering my childhood through her delight-filled eyes is something I will never forget.
I grew up listening to the Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews stage recording of My Fair Lady, and in 2008, I played Henry Higgins at the Sydney Theatre. It was a dream realised, as my late wife, Joan, was a phonetician, and it was a gratifying irony that I got to play the most famous fictional phonetician on stage. We stayed at Ravesis hotel in Bondi—the beach is half a mile wide and I ran back and forth every morning until I’d completed four miles.
When Can You Ever Forgive Me? premiered at the Telluride film festival in September 2018, Melissa McCarthy and I were totally unprepared for the awards ride we were about to board. We flew back and forth between Toronto, LA, New York and London for screenings, award shows and press junkets, culminating in the Oscars in 2019. I got to meet every acting legend imaginable and shamelessly took selfies with everyone, knowing this was my once-in-a- lifetime opportunity. It was like being in Madame Tussaud’s for real. The ultimate prize being meeting Barbra Streisand, whose career I’ve keenly followed since 1969. The whole experience felt like winning the career lottery.
Richard E. Grant co-hosts the Hotels with History podcast with Jules Perowne, in which they explore the scandals, legends and secrets behind the world’s most renowned hotels.
