Interview

‘Meeting Barbra Streisand is as golden a moment as I ever could have wished for’ – Richard E Grant

Since his wife’s death last year, veteran actor Richard E Grant has done his best to live by her advice of finding ‘a pocketful of happiness’ in each day – as related in his recently published memoir of the same name

Richard E Grant: ‘Rather than thinking you’ve got to win an Oscar, or buy a castle, it’s about finding joy in something that might be considered mundane.’

In the late 1970s when Richard E Grant was finishing up at drama school, a professor told him: “I think that you will have a career as a writer-director, but you’re too odd-looking and too lightweight to make it as an actor.”

Then in his early 20s, the son of a Swazi minister for education had no reason to contradict this assessment. “I thought that because I didn’t look like a movie actor – or ...