Richard E Grant: ‘love Again? I’m Not Looking For It’

An interview with a tinge. Richard E Grant’s “old-school reserve and biting humor” makes this a rather prickly exchange, but it is all the more fascinating for that. With Grant so unguarded, we gain a real insight.

The bonking he is referring to is a dig at his mother. He was ten, sleeping in the back of his parent’s car on the way back from a cricket match, when he was awoken by the sound of his mother and his father’s best friend having sex in the front seats. His mother left home soon after. He has kept a diary ever since.

Then when he was 15 his father caught him emptying whisky bottles down the kitchen sink. He pointed a gun at his son’s head and told him he was going to blow his brains out. Luckily he missed because he was so drunk. Grant also has a younger brother, Stuart, from whom he is estranged. How come? “We have nothing in common,” he replies.

Grant knew from the age of seven that he wanted to be an actor. “It chooses you,” he says. His father told him he wouldn’t pay for him to go to drama school because “99 per cent of actors are unemployed”.