RICHARD E.
GRANT

Richard E. Grant has a gift for characters who seem to perform even when nobody has asked them to. A change in pace or a carefully placed phrase can reveal both their charm and the uncertainty underneath. He was born Richard Grant Esterhuysen on May 5, 1957, in Mbabane, then Swaziland, now Eswatini. He studied English and drama at the University of Cape Town before establishing a screen career that would range from British comedy to American drama.

Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I (1987) introduced a memorable screen presence. Grant plays Withnail opposite Paul McGann as another struggling actor; their attempt to escape London for the countryside gives their conversations and expectations room to unravel. Withnail’s extravagant speech is funny, but the performance also makes his precariousness apparent. The result is a character whose declarations are entertaining partly because the audience can sense how much he needs them to be believed.

Grant has also worked behind the camera. Wah-Wah (2005), which he wrote and directed, draws on a childhood setting in Swaziland during the end of the colonial era. Moving from performance to directing meant shaping an ensemble and a whole environment around the story. The film offers another way into his work: an interest in the difference between public manners and private difficulty, explored through a family and the community around them.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), directed by Marielle Heller, pairs him with Melissa McCarthy. McCarthy plays writer Lee Israel, while Grant plays her friend Jack Hock. The film follows a friendship entangled with deception; the ease and discomfort between the two performers give that relationship its texture. Grant was nominated for the supporting-actor Oscar at the 2019 ceremony. The nomination recognises a performance that can move between social sparkle and a quieter sense of need.

His credits span many kinds of production, including television’s Loki and fantasy films such as The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. Across them, the pleasure is often in watching how quickly he establishes a character’s relationship to a room and to the other people in it. His larger career includes more work than the films currently listed in FLM.RED; the site’s links lead to the titles available in its own catalogue.