- You have to go by instinct,
a combination of does this script appeal,
who are the other actors attached,
who is the director?
All of those things combined to make it seem
a viable project.
You have no way of knowing because
you have to take a gamble otherwise
every movie you made would be an instant hit
because we'd all known and you know nobody does that.
As William Gilbert the late screenwriter said,
"nobody knows anything."
[upbeat piano music]
My name is Richard E. Grant
and this is the timeline of my career.
What a piece of work is a man.
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,
how like an angel in apprehension,
how like a god of beauty of the world.
I had been unemployed for nine months
before I got this part, so playing somebody
who is bitter and twisted about being
an alcoholic, unemployable actor
was the best and unplanned life experience
that I could possibly have had.
I was 29 years old in the spring of 1986.
They had tried to get this movie
with an unpronounceable title "Withnail and I" cast.
Daniel Day Lewis had just come off
a double whammy of appearing in "Room With a View"
and "My Beautiful Launderette",
so he was offered absolutely everything
including the lead in "Withnail and I".
Massively he turned it down and the casting director
was then scraping around, I had never done a movie before
let alone an audition for one
and got called up by the late Mary Selway
the casting director, she cast me in it
that gave me the beginning of a film career
and the irony is that I am allergic to alcohol
as I discovered when I was a teenager
that I had blood tests and have no enzyme in my system,
so Bruce Robinson the writer/director,
he's a masochist of course and he insisted
that I had a chemical memory
and so he sent me home and I got paralytically drunk
on a bottle of champagne.
Throwing up, drinking, throwing up, drinking
until I eventually went to rehearsals the next morning
and then there was a moment where I knew
that I had to get out of the door
because I could feel a Persian carpet of vomit
coming up my throat, passed out outside
and then woke up in my own bed 24 hours later
having no memory of how I got there.
In the scene of the movie where these two characters
are just so desperate for any kind of alcohol
or substance he takes lighter fluid
and during the rehearsal it had been water
and Bruce Robinson replaced it
with very, very strong vinegar,
so when this went down my throat I choked
and then vomited all over Paul McGann's shoes
out of site of the camera.
Paul McGann had a big television series.
He was very self-confident and I'm 6'2"
and he said, "you know, you're never ever
"gonna make it in the movies because
"everybody is height impaired like Tom Cruise"
and I said, "well, Clint Eastwood's over 6'2"
"and there are people that are over 6'2."
He said, "Nah, you haven't a chance."
[laughing]
He was you know funny and mocking,
but I was convinced that I would never work again
and ironically playing that out of work,
alcoholic, drug-addicted actor
has lead to every single job almost without exception
that I've had in the movie industry ever since.
Would not Satan have saved you,
were he thus inclined?
- Perhaps he'll save us both, Redferne.
- Withnail had opened in America
before it did in England and a director
called Steve Miner and the late great producer,
Arnold Kopelson who had just won an Oscar
came to London because they were doing this
historical horror movie called "Warlock",
set between the 18th century and the 20th century
and they wanted Sean Connery, he turned it down,
they then went to Michael Douglas, he turned it down
and then they'd seen Withnail
and thought well we'll get a skinny English guy
who's gonna cost us nothing, he'll do a Scottish accent
because we originally wanted Sean Connery.
So I went to L.A. and the first job I did there
was this horror movie that had this tagline,
"He came from the past to destroy the future."
All I know to say, oh you know Hollywood
and write it off as a superficial place
of no consequence, but I absolutely loved it.
I'd been a film buff because I grew up in Swaziland,
which was a British protectorate in Southeast Africa.
There was no television where I grew up
at all until I had left.
Movies and the radio were the two outlets
into the world beyond.
The idea that I would ever be in a movie,
let alone work in Hollywood was so unlikely
that I was just gobsmacked to be there.
Hi. - Hi.
- I loved your wacky TV bit.
- Thanks, I loved your too.
- But I didn't...
- You know I can explain it's a very simple thing...
- Oh, I see.
- See it's a thing that I do regularly...
- That's marvelously funny.
You have a lot of verve.
- Verve?
- I had done a second film with Bruce Robinson
called "How to Get Ahead in Advertising"
and at the premiere of that I met Steve Martin
and he said, "Would you be in my next movie?"
and I thought yeah, pigs might fly.
A month later true to his word
I got the script of "L.A. Story"
and was flown out to L.A., so that was my second job there
and I had been warned that Steve
was very difficult to get to know,
there would be no small talk whatsoever.
So I was staying at the Chateau Marmont
and I got a phone call, "Hey, it's Steve."
I said, "Steve who?"
He said, "Steve Martin."
"Do you want to come over for brunch?"
I said, "Okay."
And he opened the door and he was very friendly
and he said, "Would you like a drink?
What do you want to eat?"
I meet his wife Victoria Tennant
who I was playing the husband of in the story
and I thought I'd be there for half an hour,
10 minutes I had no idea, stayed the whole day.
So he was the complete opposite
of what I had been told he would be like.
We've become from that age onwards great friends
and we used to communicate at the end of the last century
by fax on a weekly basis.
So he's got apparently sort of box of faxes that thick.
There's a book that we have written between us
of this 30 year friendship.
I've got all the emails.
He's kept all the faxes.
He could have me in court really
or other people could have me in court
because they are unvarnished in which
nothing is censored and no prisoners are taken.
So there was this scene inside the L.A. Museum,
Steve was on roller skates, he's such a physical comedian
when he puts his mind to it he just has
this obsessive determination to get something right
and it was an amazing privilege
to be able to film in that museum
without anybody else around,
so that's all I remember from that day
and the fact that all the fashions
were high-waisted, pleated pants
I don't think will ever come back into fashion.
She's dead.
I'll tell you there's not a dry eye in the house.
- She's dead?
- She's dead.
This is a tough story, a tragedy
in which an innocent woman dies.
Why?
Because that happens.
I was in an absolute disastrous movie "Hudson Hawk"
starring Bruce Willis doing this
James Bond-like spoof or that was the intention of it.
At the premiere as I sat down
there was a tap on my shoulder,
"Hey, E. Grant."
Robert Altman.
And he said," I've got a part for you
"in a movie called "The Player",
"which I'm starting shooting in a months time.
"Are you available?"
And I said Bob, what you're about to see "Hudson Hawk"
is so diabolical that I will never ever
be able to work in L.A. or the movie industry ever again.
He said, "Ah, no."
When I got this career resurrection
to finally work with Bob Altman
was an amazing, life reaffirming thing
because he absolutely loved actors.
He liked actors with very long faces,
who were very thin and didn't cost a lot of money.
I had seen "Nashville" when I was a theater student 27 times
in a movie house, so I was a complete Altman obsessive,
so when I got the opportunity to work with him once
and then subsequently got to be
in three of his other movies was the real fulfillment
of a teenage movie buffs dream.
I miss him and his wife Kathryn
more than anybody that I've ever worked with
in show business because he would invite
all the crew and all the actors to watch the dailies
every evening, everyone was offered a joint
or a drink, you really felt that you were part
of an experience of a movie being made
rather than the piecemeal in which movies are made
where people are so isolated.
I've been in movies where I haven't even met
other actors who were in the movie
because your scenes don't cross over until the premiere.
From an actors point of view if you're a social person
like I am it was really the ideal.
The fact that "The Player" completely
resurrected Altman's career was an amazingly touching,
warm-hearted moment, so I was honored to be in it.
Really here at the opera like that sitting her
next to May Welland, it's all very odd.
- Well, she's had such an odd life.
- Will he even bring her to the Beaufort's Ball
you suppose?
- [Older Man With Glasses] If they do
the talk will be of little else.
- During "The Player" one of the producers
threw a party at which everybody in the room
was Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, Barbara Streisand,
Ellen Barkin, Winona Ryder who was 19.
She came up to me and blew fan smoke
because she was still living with Johnny Depp
at that time and she said, "Johnny Depp
"and I know every single line of Withnail"
and she started quoting it at me.
Winona said to me, "You have to be in Dracula,
"which I'm doing."
And I said well who's directing it?
And she said, "Coppola".
I said, well what power do you have?
She said, "No, I'm the one that's
"got the thing financed."
Through Winona, I got to be in Dracula
and once I was in Dracula I then
got cast straight after that again
I think because of agent Winona
in Martin Scorsese's "Age of Innocence"
playing a small part, but when I meet Daniel Day Lewis
on the first morning I did prostrate myself
and I said, "Oh Daniel, thank you
"for giving me my career break by turning down
"'Withnail and I' four years previously"
and he said, "Arise my son."
The following day he didn't speak to me
for the next three months
and I didn't know what I'd done wrong
and I said to Michelle Pfeiffer,
"What the [beep] is going on?".
She said, "Oh, it's because his character
"hates your character."
Oh, okay.
It was very unnerving and then from then onwards
he never spoke to me until my last day
and then he suddenly broke out of character
and said, "Hey, it was so great to work with you."
or whatever.
Completely floored.
Working with Altman, then Coppola, then Scorsese
for somebody that had grown up
on all of their movies in the '70s
was something that I couldn't possibly have taken on board,
so both being Italian-American directors
Coppola works in an atmosphere of circus-like chaos.
He said, "I can't cook for two people,
"I have to cook for 30", so when we were
staying at his house and every night
he'd cook for all of us.
People would arrive with their dogs
and their pets and their relatives
and they were friends, there was visitors,
it was a very social, extended Italian family atmosphere
and that went on for the six or seven months of shooting.
Flip to a month later, New York,
Martin Scorsese who speaks at bullet speed
as you know, everything was monastically quiet.
Somebody would even whisper to me...
[unintelligible sound]
Everybody's on tenter hooks at all times
and I said to Michael Ballhaus Director of Photography,
you've worked with Martin Scorsese before, is this the norm?
He said, "Oh yeah, yeah, this is how it is."
So it seemed almost a contradiction inters to me
that a man whose movies are so charged
with the sounds of violence
and incredibly iconic soundtracks
full of amazing music when he works
it is as quiet as a tomb that was a big surprise.
- It's up to us whether we turn up
to this gig or not tomorrow, all right.
- Okay, stay at home.
That's fine.
- Fine.
- What about the fans?
We can't let them down.
- Well that's just too bad.
I love that we're segwaying from
working with Martin Scorsese to "Spice World" the movie.
But there's a great outcome to working on this.
In the days of answering machines
my eight year old daughter came back
and of course she loved doing this,
she'd press the button and listen to the messages
and there was a message that went,
"You have an offer to play for X amount of money
the Spice Girls manager in 'Spice World' the movie."
She went absolutely apoplectic.
She said, "Dad I don't care if you get a Disney contract
"for 50 years, you have to be in the 'Spice World' movie,
"so that I can come meet them."
I did and they were very, very kind
and generous towards her and I got
an enormous amount of professional flack
from very grand actors who said,
how can you be in a movie, they aren't actors,
there was no real script to speak of
and you've basically prostituted yourself.
Fast forward 20 years Adele was a "Spice World" fan,
she sent me tickets to go and see her
at the O2 when you couldn't get in to see her live
for love nor money.
Likewise, Lena Dunham who didn't know "Withnail"
or any of those things had seen me
in "Spice World" the movie and asked me to play
a part in one episode of "Girls"
and then wrote me into three more episodes,
it paid off in the end and now "Spice World"
has a cult following and there are people
that dress up as the Spice Girls.
Mostly men I think.
They weren't in the acting discipline
of you have to do it like this
they were basically encouraged to be entirely themselves,
so I loved working with them.
The biggest surprise is that Victoria Beckham
has this persona of non-smiling
and being very serious, but she was really funny
and had a great sense of humor.
They sent me to a sort of rock and roll tailor
and they kitted me out in amazing satin
and wet-look fancy suits, all of which I've still got.
I got them at the end, so they're in my attic.
- Thank you for your efficiency.
- You're all set then.
- [Male] Yes, George?
- Nothing, sir.
- [Male] I should hope not.
- What was extraordinary about "Gosford Park"
is that Altman had two cameras
working simultaneously on two tracks
and one would be going that way
and the other one would be going that way.
You never knew who it was focused on,
so you had to be completely in character,
completely in the moment and interact with everybody
in the way that felt as close to real life
as you could possibly conjure up.
The full arc or trajectory of an actor's career
was visible and you could go and speak to somebody
that was bright eyed and bushy tailed
who just coming out of drama school
is you know first movie and a big break,
then to the middle aged ones of which I was at that time,
then to the older ones who were sitting around
telling war stories and you know who's died
and this bevy of knights and dames.
Kristen Scott Thomas and Dame Maggie Smith,
it was a great education about
what to expect or not expect or just to enjoy from a career.
You felt completely, communally involved
and valued as an actor in it
and he knew everybody's name and he was as much
interested if the frame of the movie was like that
of what was going on in this left-hand corner
as what was in the center of the frame.
He would microphone between 18
and 25 actors so that what happens in real life
is people overlap, interrupt or whatever
and he wanted that to be the nature
of how a movie was made.
I don't understand why most movies
are not made like that.
In 2002 when "Gosford Park" won Best Ensemble
at the SAG Awards it was at a time
when award shows were not as they are now,
these huge media events,
but we were thrilled that we got one,
but kind of impact or import of it
didn't strike in quite the same way
because it's like oh yeah you guys got an award.
Where? What?
That's how it was.
Whereas now every corner of the English speaking globe
seems to know when the SAG Awards are on
and the Golden Globes.
In the two months of the award season
there seems to be one almost every two days.
- Gary said I'd be bored stiff,
but I love it.
- How very hubbly-jubbly for you.
- Hubbly-jubbly. - Hubbly-jubbly.
- Blah blah this, tub a bub, hubbly-jubbly,
hoighty toighty, toodle loo, ding dong.
Sounds like a load of old Wah-Wah.
- I had a very dysfunctional childhood
where I grew up my mother ran off
with my father's best friend when I was 10
and I inadvertently woke up in the backseat
of a car and saw her imforgranted
with my father's best friend on the front seat
which is the opening scene of my movie "Wah-Wah"
and "Wah-Wah" is what my American stepmother
identified as the way posh English people spoke,
it's all wah wah wah like that,
she couldn't really understand what they were saying.
[unintelligible sounds]
It was really a coming of age when I was 14
and Nicholas Hoult played me,
it was an amazing experience to go
back to Swaziland where no movie
had ever been made and being a first time
writer/director I was able to recreate
in all the places where these events happened
in my life and film them and have people
that were middle aged when I was young
now in their old age playing extras in the movie,
so it was a very cathartic experience to do that
and also unlike being an actor
you are in control of everything.
For somebody who's a detail obsessive,
which I am it is the perfect job,
so being asked a thousand questions a day
of somebody saying you know should it be this color,
do I come in from here or what's the motivation for this.
I love that.
I met the late great director Mike Nichols
just before I started shooting
and I said, "what's your advice?".
He said, "actors can always act faster
"than they think", so we'd do one or two takes
and when I was satisfied with what I had got
I always asked the actor do one for you
and then I said always at the end,
let's do one for Mike.
In other words leave whatever pauses
or whatever you are doing and just motor through it
and almost without exception the doing one for Mike
were the takes that we used because
they had the most life, the most freedom
and the thing of speed that was a great learning experience
and a very, very simple note that had a kind of genius.
- [Interviewer] Are you hoping to direct again?
- I am now on a movie that I've been told is fully financed
and we're in the process of beginning casting.
So I'm back in the helm.
- We've a letter from his mother,
she's just heard about the Fall of the Bastille
and her son was on his way through France.
She was so desperate to get him home
she sent it by special messenger.
- Mothers.
- Some things never change.
- Lots of things never change.
Julian Fellowes had written "Gosford Park"
that's obviously the first time I had met him
and he got the Oscar for Best Screenplay
and there is a tradition in England
that almost every English actor has been in
a medical soap opera, a Dickens,
an Agatha Christie, any kind of period drama that is going
we're always in britches and tights
or cravats, it's just the way of English actors.
They had done three or four series
of "Downton Abbey" and I suppose
they were probably scrapping the barrel,
who haven't we had on this program yet.
I got cast to play Elizabeth McGovern's love interest
or he sees her as his love interest,
this sleazy art dealer.
Most of us either knew each other
or had all worked together.
I'd worked with Jeremy Swift
and Maggie Smith on "Gosford Park"
and what is interesting for me is that
Altman couldn't decide whether I was going to play
an upstairs character, which is what I'm usually cast as
because the way I look and speak
or somebody who was downstairs
and he thought it would be much more interesting
to have me playing somebody who was downstairs,
i.e. servant class, working class,
so in "Downton Abbey" I was cast
to type in that I was playing somebody
who was middle to upper class educated,
it was very interesting to experience that.
- You're friends with Julia something?
- [Man At Bar] Steinberg.
- Yep.
- She not an agent anymore.
She died.
- She did?
Jesus, that's young.
- Maybe she didn't die, maybe she just
moved back to the suburbs.
I always confuse those two.
No, that's right she got married and had twins.
- Better to have died.
- Indeed.
In November three years ago I got a call
from my agent who said, "You have to read this script
"in 24 hours, they start shooting
"at the beginning of January in New York."
I said, who's turned it down or who's died.
She said, "Irrelevant, don't ask that question."
I said, well who's playing Lee Israel?
And they said Melissa McCarthy
and I thought it's gonna be a very broad comedy.
I started reading it and realized
there was an amazing true story
and astonished that I had never heard of Lee Israel before
or this scam that she pulled off,
these literary forgeries of famous dead writer's letters.
So I read it and of course said yes
and we read through the script
with Marielle Heller the director.
What we liked about how we approached our work?
What do we like to eat?
Got on instantaneously and we started shooting
on the Monday.
The contrast of coming off "Logan",
which had a crew of about 300 guys
with arms bigger than my thighs,
which is not saying much but with explosions of hardware,
to then go from that to working
on this very intimate, small scale
in apartments and bookshops around New York
the emotional intimacy of it compared
to the machismo of being on a big action Marvel movie
couldn't have been more extreme
and of course that subject matter.
But it is the way that Mari approaches work
that she creates a very communal atmosphere
in which you feel safe to do whatever you can bring
to the table or to try and surprise her.
We had no concept or idea that this movie
would have the critical acclaim that it subsequently got
or that any of us would get award recognition
or nominations in those big five awards.
It's about as ideal a working condition
that you could hope for as an actor.
I would work with both of them in a nano-second again.
- It was a coordinated incursion Allegiant General.
They overpowered the guards and forced me
to take them to their ship.
- I see.
Get me the Supreme Leader.
- Yes sir.
- Tell him we found our spy.
Star Wars exactly like the casting of "Logan"
I got sent a generic interrogation scene
from a 1940s English war movie,
pages of dialogue which you had to learn,
self-tape on an iPad, send it off into cyberspace,
don't hear anything for two months,
don't even know what the title of the project is
or what it's for you just know
that they want two different flavors from the scenes
that they've sent.
I got a call saying J.J. Abrams
of course you know the front half of my brain
knew exactly who he was.
I was amazed at his self-confidence
and self-possession because we don't get people
like that in England, certainly not in the movie business
and they said, "J.J. Abrams is sending you a car
"to go to Pinewood Studios just outside London,
"for a meeting" and I said, for what?
And they said, "Oh, it's for Star Wars, the final one."
So I went and walked into the room,
Daisy Ridley was sitting with him
and I thought well what am I doing,
am I auditioning with Daisy,
am I reading in or whatever and he said,
"So, are you gonna do the part?"
And I said well what part and he started describing it.
I just felt the room going upside down
and I thought how the hell am I being offered
in my early 60s a villain role
in the final ever Star Wars movie
and I didn't really believe it
all the way through the shooting
I kept being convinced I'd be fired,
cut out or replaced, so every time I came into work
I'd say to J.J., "Please pinch my shoulder,
"so that I know I have some physical evidence
"to show that I've actually been here"
because everything is filmed under incredible secrecy.
You have to wear a cloak going from the makeup trailer
into the studio because they had drones
from various tabloid newspapers flying overhead.
On the day that you worked you would get the scene
and you had to sing in for it and sign out for it
at the end of the day and then learn it on the spot.
Most secretive job I've ever been on,
it was like Fort Knox lock down, nothing.
I never even dared tell my wife
and daughter the name of my character
because I thought if they told anybody
or my daughter mentioned it on social media
to a friend I would get exposed and fired,
so it was a unique experience from that point of view
and I thought the movie was absolutely amazing
and how he managed to wrangle all these nine movies
and satisfy so much of what that franchise ended with
and I think he did an amazing job.
Having begun last year with an Oscar nomination,
Golden Globe, SAG all those things
and then at the end of the year
to be in the final ever Star Wars movie,
which I had obsessively followed
since I was a 20 year old drama student
in 1977 when I saw the first one,
it's a year that will never be repeated
in my experience ever again.
So I'm very grateful to it and it all happened in America.
This is Peter.
Peter was you if you entered your day
in the same place you began it
with no change everyday like the others.
This is existing, not living.
Now you know Peter, squint your eyes and Peter is you
enough so at least that I think
we can jump right in to day something changes.
Doing the run up to the Oscars
Jason Segal contacted me via my agent
and said, "Can I have breakfast with you
"at the Four Seasons Hotel."
He then spoke with great erudition
and he's very articulate and passionate about
this dream project that he had
in which he was the writer, showrunner,
director and lead actor and he described
what I was playing as a kind of
essentially a puppet master of somebody who
is controlling a game where a whole
disparate group of people start going on a quest
and it's to do with identity and going into your past
via a virtual reality set on your head.
He won me over and I met Sally Field
and I said, "Have you read the whole thing?"
and he said "no" and I said,
"Well can I read the whole thing?"
and he said, "No, it doesn't exist yet.
"We've got a couple of episodes
"that you can go on that and this is the concept
"and this is how we think it's going to end."
But nothing was finite at that point.
I thought well if Sally is taking the chance
and gamble on it, I'll do the same thing.
My father was dead at 53 and I'm now about to be 63,
so I feel that every year that I've lived
longer than he did is a bonus
and that because he died so young it has really
made me appreciate the here and now
and grabbing every opportunity that you can
so that you don't end up as many people I know do
by my age of going should've, could've, would've
and that way bitterness and unhappiness lies,
so seize the day.