* Richard E Grant: ‘Visiting Provence became too painful after Joan died’
I had not been noticed for anything in particular at school, and then, when I was 12, I had a role in a play, and the reaction was so different. It felt like I’d been seen for the first time. When I stupidly voiced that I wanted to become a professional actor when I grew up, it was so derided and scorned that it felt like it had to become a secret thing I followed. My father said I was so talkative, hyperactive and argumentative that I should be a barrister. I said I’m not going to do that, and he said you’re going to spend your life wearing make-up, in tights and narrowly avoiding a buggery. All of which has come true.
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, when I was ten. I’ve listened to it endlessly since. The first film I appeared in, Withnail and I, was produced by George Harrison. Ringo came on set one day, and I’ve since got to know Paul McCartney. I never met John Lennon, but meeting those three was the stuff of dreams for me.
Donald Sutherland, after watching him in Kelly’s Heroes and The Dirty Dozen. He was over six feet tall, very gangly, skinny and with a long tombstone face, and he grew up in a tiny town in Canada. He was my role model for becoming a professional actor. I thought that if he could do it looking like that, then I could, as I’d always been called “rib cage” because I was so skinny. You could count the ribs on my chest.
Peter Pan when I was five. I spent most of the time underneath the seat because I was so petrified of Captain Hook and the crocodile. I showed it to my daughter, and she was terrified too. It’s good to be terrified as a child; it prepares you for the delights of adulthood.
I cry at everything. When I saw ET in 1983, I was not able to leave the cinema because I was so bereft. I was completely wiped out by it. I saw it again at an anniversary screening a few years ago and it did exactly the same thing. There’s nothing like a good blub in the dark.
I was a Bowie fanatic growing up. When the Pin Ups album came out with Twiggy on the cover I was 16. I had that mullet haircut that he had. For a whole year at school I was called Bowie. I was thrilled by that.
Percy Sledge was the first, but the person I met who I’d idolised my whole life was Barbra Streisand. I met her at the Oscars in 2019 and it was everything I had dreamt that it could be. I shamelessly took selfies with her without even asking for permission. A year later I had a two-hour conversation with her at Donna Karan’s house. At the end I told Streisand I had a confession to make: “I’ve commissioned a two-foot-tall sculpture of your face for my garden.” She said I was crazy. She hasn’t seen it, but I’ve sent her photos.
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In the run-up to that Oscars I went with my wife up to the coast of Malibu, and we stopped outside Streisand’s gates, and I posted a photo of myself along with a letter I wrote to her when she was 15. She replied on Twitter, thanking me for the beautiful letter, and I couldn’t believe it. It went viral. When she then came out to present Spike Lee’s award at the Oscars, I stood up like a human erection. Because the thing had gone viral, the camera recorded my reaction. That was a moment when I thought I was famous, if only for being the first guy standing up for Streisand.
When I got Oscar-nominated for Can You Ever Forgive Me? You’re voted for by your peers, and I felt that people knew who I am in a way that I’d never taken on board before. When I met people who had been legends in their careers and they knew who I was, that absolutely floored me.
Nuremberg is in cinemas from Nov 14
What are your formative cultural experiences? Let us know in the comments below
