Conversations with Richard E. Grant

good afternoon everyone my name is Maura Webster I'm the program manager here in New York and we're so excited to have the incredibly talented Richard grant here today who I knew you've done I need done an incredible Tonio I knew you had an incredible body of work I was really surprised when I saw you put over 127 IMDB credits across the years I think they lie serious I think that I think that some of the things that they've claimed that I'm in I'm not but thank you yes 127 not even including theater richard has obviously had his incredible break out and with Nell and I appeared in films and worked with some of the greatest directors of all time including Francis Ford Coppola Bram Stoker's Dracula Robert Altman in the player Gosford Park and is currently nominated for many awards as his incredible turn and can you ever forgive me including a SAG Award thank you I would love to start by talking a little bit about your early passion for storytelling filmmaking television theater when you were growing up as a kid and as a teenager what was the moment that you started to realize that your passion and interest in that was different to your friends and your peers around you thank you for the question uh I'm still amazed anybody's turned up at this time of the day afternoon in New York unbelievable when I was seven exactly got photographs of this in my parents photo albums I made theaters out of shoe boxes with cutout figures stuck on lollipop sticks and painted scenery and a hole in the top of the box for a bedside lamp so that where that came from I have no history of it in my family whatsoever and then I started making glove puppets and then progressed to marionette string puppets and I got them every birthday and every Christmas my father built me a marionette theater in our garage and I did school plays and I was taunted and teased for playing with dolls because these puppets were considered dolls in the macho culture that I grew up in colonial southeast Africa so I got in newer to the idea that's either being mocked or told no you'll never do it from a very early age and I didn't give a sorry so I think that once I got used to that or thinking well I don't think these are dolls this is a way of entertaining people and expressing yourself it seemed just a logical career but I never know I think nobody ever imagined I certainly didn't that I could make a where I grew up I could make a living out of out of doing that that's what other people did so I'm thrilled in a maze that it's it's worked out that I've actually done it and earn a living doing it it's still a miracle to me so long answer to your short question I don't know where that impulse comes from or what it is but it's I think it's whether it chooses you or you choose it I don't know I think it's in the DNA of you're who you are somehow and you mentioned growing up in Swaziland and obviously were growing up there with English parents do you think that that gave you a unique perspective in the fact that you were enriched with multicultural heritage around you you went to a very multicultural international school and then moving over to the UK when you were older and assimilating to a new society essentially it's very difficult to try and I think it's like how do you assess your own performance in something but what the ethos of the school that I went to with at which Nelson Mandela's children his two daughters Enzian Czerny were at the school at the time that I was there who did school plays together and knowing that they could only see their father in Robin on Robben Island once a year and we were 1,200 miles north in Swaziland which was called the Switzerland of Africa because it was mountainous and peaceful just the we never ever thought that I don't think they they didn't either that their father would ever be released never mind become the president of the liberated country post the revolution so multi-faith multi-ethnicity acceptance and tolerance so everything was the absolute ethos of the school and I thought in a sense it's it's almost the best preparation for being an actor because no matter what age you are you have to be open-minded inclusive curious and embrace everything if there is out there because the moment you you say well you know I'm only I'm a right wing act or I left doing act I'm only going to do this it seems like you're cutting off your foot to please your whatever that expression is so it just seems an inhumane way to live when I hear people talking like then I just think what is wrong with your head that you think that we need to build a wall to keep Mexicans rug dealers and terrorists out of the country Your Honor I mean it's I can't get my head round that anyway does that answer your question it doesn't it's really interesting to hear you talk about how even choosing projects and stories has become something that everyone's boxing themselves in on a little bit I'm so following that you went to study drama and English at University yeah were you going into a double degree with the idea of I need to have a backup career if so what was that hi and welcome I started so finish my father said to me I think my father was so horrified by the idea of my becoming an actor and he did take me aside and very seriously said to me you do realize that you're gonna spend your life in makeup in tights and trying to avoid being sodomized all of which have come true and so you know he wanted me to have a you know I think he genuinely I understand this being a parent myself that that's the future of your child he thought I'd be destitute in tights and makeup and the other so he said well if you can find a university were you can do a degree as well as drama training which he knew didn't exist I'll pay for that so I then found out that there was a place that you could you could do a degree as well as a Drama Diploma over stretched over four years so that's what I did and he's it pay so I'm very grateful for that having gone through training do you notice of sense a difference can you tell when you're working against an actor if they've had that training or if they've just kind of gone with gut instinct and does it affect the way that you go into a performance with them hand on heart I don't believe that you can teach anybody to act I think you either believe somebody or you don't and I've I've worked with incredibly technically proficient and highly trained actors who that's what I see you kinda go yeah I can see oh that's wonderful that we've done that but do I feel anything do I believe it no and other people that have had no training whatsoever and you go oh my god how do they do that so which is probably I'm not dissing drama schools because I know they could and I get letters every single week from drama students in England saying please can you sponsor me $30,000 for my first year drama school I go don't waste the time because you're gonna be in debt and there's no guarantee that you're gonna ever pay that money back if you take a bank loan or guarantee that you get a job just try and start doing wherever you can get a job or some kind of job do that because my experience of drama school is yes they can teach you movement and period dancing and fencing and all the things that you think you're gonna be vitally important for your career but you know when you go into a room it's the first five seconds impression that you make that's makes or break you know whether somebody wants you or you look the right shape or size or you know the tutsi stuff I can play tomatoes or whatever you know it's so I think it didn't give you a discipline but can they teach you to act I'd honestly hand on heart don't believe that they can know it's worth every drama training professionals here it's a great perspective and you started out oh can I also add to that sorry absolutely at the end of my drama training the professor of the Drama School took me in for an assessment and said I feat you know you get 15 minutes at the end of your time and he said well I think that this is what I'm outlining that I think you will have as your future and he said I think you'll be a director because she writes and you've directed plays at the drama school but I genuinely Hannah Hart think that you're not gonna have a career as an actor and I was like this he said I said why he said you're too weird-looking your pipe cleaner tall thin as I was then and you have a very long face like a tombstone I just think you're gonna register and of course the first movie I was ever in 32 years ago with Nell and I every single review in England said Tombstone featured lantern-jawed bucket undertake his assistant so in a sense he was right but he was wrong but I got the gig so him and all the while I was thinking Doral Solan is over six foot and he has a very long face and Barbara Streisand has a very unusual face and they've both done it so em yeah that's fantastic advice following studying University you then went and worked at a theatre company in Cape Town mm-hmm what is some of the things that looking back at it were maybe missteps that you made the first time or lessons that you learned during that time period that you still use in performances today the misc step was that we were it was a multi-ethnic as it was called then multiracial company and there was this peculiar phenomenon that despite the riots that happened through all this southern African students who refused to be taught in the oppressors language of Afrikaans and people went on riot and people rioted and there was people were shot and I mean it was just we felt that we were in the crucible of history at this in the spring of 1976 and I had the delusion as a young man with you know great ideals in a world that by doing left-wing liberal plays I would somehow help the revolution but of course the reality was that even though we're a multiracial theatre company in a theatre which was unique in that as for few garden and the lady Vaughn braceland had set it up in which people could of all ethnicities were allowed to work together but the reality was at the end of the day at the end of rehearsals at the end of a performance they had to go to segregated living areas and you as a white person went to even over student digs it was immensely privileged compared to the black actors that we were working with so and the audience's that came were I'm sure like everybody in this room here you were liberal minded and already over to the course so I realized after two years of doing that that essentially it would be the most right-wing militants of the white government in that country and the most left-wing militants of the African National Congress when those two came together and fought it out that's where the real battle was going to happen it wasn't going to be an in a liberal minority artsy-fartsy bunch of people so you know people say that yeah even just making one bit of difference or or doing something changes people's consciousness but in that situation I think that that was delusional but I know that has answered your question has it it has in a very interesting way that I didn't expect so appreciate it okay what point did you go from there to decide about all these reserved seats and the poor reserves have not turned up if you ever want to move into them they can following that what was the point at which you realized that you wanted to spend time pursuing your career in the UK and could you talk a little bit about your early experience kind of trying to get representation going out on auditions and trying to really make this a career that would support you financially as well well I came to London in 1982 just as the Falkland war was starting so it's country was sort of an upheaval and mrs. Thatcher was running amok and doing all this Banda learing trying to be Churchill number two and a skirt and because her ratings had collapsed and I was a waiter at a Brasserie in Covent Garden for seven months with a lot of out-of-work Australian actors all of whom I managed to stay in the job as long as I did because I'm allergic to alcohol so I didn't drink anything and I didn't steal anything either so these two things for a waiter I didn't realise were that that ticked you with two big boxes because they thought well he doesn't drink it isn't steal you can you could stay working yes they're obviously stealing drunkard waiters in our midst and after six months of doing that I thought this I can't I can't it's I'm 25 years old do something so I got together with actors that I was working with and at that time which is hard to imagine now there was a tradition in London of doing lunchtime theater in pub theatres so in a bar you could do a play on a tiny stage like this and people who were off work for lunch pre the internet would come and watch and pay you know half a dollar or whatever and from that I then got an agent and then that's how I started getting work so it was yeah I had two math piecemeal the usual thing I painted and decorated drove people to the airport did all that stuff so you know the most disputing and I'm sure any actor in this room will know what that's like is that I've been unemployed from nine months in 1985 and I'd done an improvised film for the BBC with Gary Oldman before he was Gary Oldman so I knew that I'd had that and because he took nine months to come out I didn't realize that month after month I would not get another job so yours your self-esteem is so decimated by that because if somebody says to you what do you do and you say well I'm an actor and they go well what have you been in what are you doing and you don't have anything to say you can see them just thinking loser liar written you know in neon across their faces so having that self belief or faith to just hang in there that's the that's the that's the part that drama school absolutely did not prepare me for so being in the real world and having to do a real job was very salutary and you know brought me up sharp so of course the day that the it was a Sunday night transmission at the beginning of 1976 I'll never forget it early January this improvised film by advertising went out that Gary and I were in and the next day I got an agent and the following week I got to meet a casting director who then cast me in Whistler and I simply because they'd been trying for two months to cast the part and Daniel day-lewis god bless him turn the part down otherwise I wouldn't be here so you know luck and circumstance as much as anything so having come through that period of unemployment and then playing a character like with Nell who's an out-of-work actor best boy notion we better yeah yes you ever nervous that life might imitate art following that yeah I still feel that that it is every part you auditioned for I mean I've just been in just finished doing Star Wars the final store was one and I self taped for that the point of what I'm saying is that I feel that you never stop auditioning I certainly at my level of where I am in the industry it I accept that that's what it is and I met my wife is a dialect accent coach and she was coaching Donald Sutherland on a movie to do an accent economy what it was you know 25 years ago and I remember meeting him and saying mr. Sutherland I'm Donald I didn't tell him that I was hero-worshipped him as a young actor and he I said when at what age do you stop having to audition and he said no no you've got this all wrong I said what do you mean he said an audition is a is a the possibility for you to test whether you want to work with these people or not I thought that's a mindset to go into he said no you have to think of it that way I said well that takes a big leap of ego he said they should be so lucky to have you in the room I said I never feel like that when I go into the audition as all I Jesus Gary almonds just before me and zeros after me you know I just said I hope in hell he said no you use it as a chance to test them out and for them to test you so it completely changed my mindset about auditioning and Cybermen happily but I've accepted that is just part and parcel of what you do that it doesn't matter what you've done before how many awards or things that you've done they don't really count because somebody's on a new project and it's probably half your age at my age now and wants to see if you can do what what what they want so I accept that it's wonderful and it's testament to you as well because there's a lot of actors who've been in the industry as long as you have who refuse to audition sometimes but that's astonishes me and so you wouldn't have been casting star wars if that was your mantra yeah I think that if and I know that that there are agents who say oh no I would never make my client audition and I go why the not because I know that there's a Shelley Winters story when somebody said you know can you audition and she said she took her Oscar out of her bag and said well some people think I can act but you know I understand that but at the same time I also you know accept that everybody wants to feel that you know you're you're working for them so you have to you know bend over and take it like a man or woman the sodomy you mentioned earlier you also had the experience of being on the other side of it and working with accosting director when you wrote and directed a film based on your childhood and growing up in Swaziland wah-wah which is a beautiful film congratulations on that what sort of room and tone did you want to try and create in the audition process having known what it's like on the other side of kindness and compassion more than anything and giving people time so that whoever came in even when I knew that I had already cast the part in my head and hoping that the availability of the actor would be that would fit but you you go through the backups and I also wrote a thank-you card to every single person that came and auditioned because what I find so an isle ating is when you do an audition if you're face to face with the person I understand on you know self tape then yeah you've never met the person so there's no human connection but if you've met the person and somebody said you're loved what you did yeah let's just try it like this and you have ten or fifteen or five minutes with a person and then you hear absolutely nothing you have no no feedback or follow-up and I was told that in all the experience of all the actors that I did the audition nobody had ever ever done that and I thought well and I realized that you know if you're a big movie director or whatever you don't have the time or inclination to do that but how difficult it is to just send an email or text or a stamp thing to say thank you for coming in I'm sorry it didn't work out with you that um seems to me but anyway I'm overseeing the minority of one I'm also really interested to hear a little bit about your casting process like Nicholas Hoult was one of the actors that played a younger version of you and that was prior to him really having the big breakout in skins and movies he'd obviously been in it about a boy yeah what was it that you saw in him that you thought was really unique and really special that he could bring to that he came in and more than any other actor that had come in he required the least amount of direction and he was literally like a sponge I saw him the other night at the Golden Globes and he was 14 when I worked with him so literally his half his life further on to now being 28 and he seemed like the same person unaffected by all the stuff and I said you know that's an amazing Calvin Klein suit that you're in he said it's borrowed I said you know what is it like being in Rome II did the Golden Globes before and he being the Oscars was Jennifer Lawrence um up down sideways and he said oh it's all just you know just fancying around a it's not the real world and he seemed so grounded genuinely about what the thing actually was but to go back to your question he was he listened in a way that was so acute and not doing a number or anything whatever I suggested to him it was like blotting paper he would it would just he just instinctively reacted to whatever I asked him to do and that is I don't even teach that that was to gift and I thought God if he if he's like this then playing somebody that was my very dysfunctional childhood he would be he'd be perfect for that and he was and I like me he comes from incredibly grounded supportive happy family which I don't then once you were moving to being on set this is like this is your life you see those calculation tapes and you see yourself getting old going younger and younger and then that's it curtains sorry once you were then onset as a director I've see you've worked with amazing filmmakers as eventually some earlier did you notice yourself consciously channeling some of the things that you'd seen them do on set or in the way that you would give notes to actors that's a great question thank you the person I learnt the most from was the late absolutely great in my eye director Robert Altman yeah I loved him so much I worked in three times on the player Preta port a ready-to-wear as was caught here and Gosford Park I was about to do another one with him and then he died but I had seen Nashville 27 times when I was a student which you'll appreciate in the pre-internet pre streaming pre DVD pre video days if you can imagine that before you were born that's a big commitment you have to go and buy and turn up at a theater twenty-seven times to see a movie and in those days they didn't play for two Anna's anyway follow he the way that he worked he had a two-tier salary system so it was like being in the theater he loved an ensemble he valued what everybody's opinion was and he worked from a philosophy of that he was as interested in what was going in the corner of the frame as what was going on center stage so he'd have two cameras going simultaneously even if they crossed over in view just cut that out so that you had to be in character at all times so you couldn't you couldn't ever do that almost instinctive thing that I've seen actors do and I'm guilty of it myself everybody's on forum for the for the you know the master shot and then when it comes to close up you can feel people kind of taking the back seats you know dog going down ass and you their legs like that and then when it comes to close up sudden you get all this interest and stuff going on anything why the didn't you do that when you were doing your you know you're off lines with me so my point is that that that you never knew whether you were in close up wide or whatever so you had to be fully in the character and in the moment of whatever he was doing he also crucially invited all the crew and the actors to see the dailies or the rushes every single night so you felt that even because so much of work is cut in the Edit that at least the or the the work has had an audience once of the work that's been done and of course he was so canny about this because if there are ten takes of something and I know from doing this with my own movie because I absolutely religiously follow this you have a partisan but you have an audience before the movie has begun to be edited of which of the takes that work an out of six takes or whatever you instantly feel and no watching it as an audience that's the one that has held the attention or made people laugh or move people and that that is invaluable in the editing process when you're sitting in a room four months later alone with the editor who hasn't had that experience and you go this is what the scene is this is what's happening in the scene but even though you've written it you've then rewrite it because you've been informed by what that audience has given you and he also used to smoke dope every night which I loved and he also employed musicians on every movie so that are on a Sunday night there was free entertainment I thought this is really smart why doesn't everybody do this so I loved him anyway sounds like an incredible environment I have you know he also said that's a good ad I used to say to him usually called me grant I said what am i doing in the scene he said I don't know you you know you're the actor you do it and I said whatever do something really badly I said I'll cut it out and that so he gave you all the responsibility and in the casting of it that it was your responsibility to play the part and bring whatever you had had of the thing he didn't he wasn't prescriptive in trying to say well you've got to do it like this he didn't micromanage it was I worked at one director a Dutch director who nobody will ever have heard of thank God and he said to me I'm doing a film at Prague and he said Richard what every time you're speaking you great I said I'm watching what are you talking about duck and he say every time you are seeing a sentence you are going and I said well I have to breathe before I speak he said no no no no he's like Frank Sinatra you'll never hear the breath going in so the whole movie I was like this yes I think I'm gonna do this yes that's what I want of course the movie was a total dogger never got released so there you go but that my point being that he micromanaged every single down to the breath which was you know complete insanity was Bob adore Robert Robert Rob Altman Robert Bob Altman didn't do that what about directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Scorsese what was their style and approach to you as filmmakers on set I was on Dracula with Francis Ford Coppola and the best analogy I can give to this is that we were at the NAP of in his wine estate in Napa Valley for three weeks rehearsal beforehand and in the this big warehouse where the Godfather desk was here the boat from [Music] Apocalypse Now was over here the cars from the other car movie was over there so it was amazing to be amongst these sort of iconic talismans of his movies and I asked him how BIG's you used to cook every night for 30 of us and I said do you cook every night he said I don't know how to cook for two people but I know how to cook for 30 people and that is essentially how he makes movies that he likes the social circus and chaos of many people and there were dogs and relatives and people and everybody used to turn up doing the shooting he put music on if you felt the scene was great we said what about the sony sound that will just double you know afterwards so you felt that anything was possible and he de he's like a ringmaster in the middle of a semi organized chaos I went straight from that to working thanks to Winona Ryder to age of innocence where the director spoke at bullet speed as you know Scorsese so the late Michael Bauhaus the cinematographer who done both movies I said Michael how is this how Scorsese always works was how do you make his big gangster movies and Casino and all this stuff with all these explosions and bodies and blood and whatever but they're noisy violence you know visceral things and he said oh no Richard it's very very it's monastic very work all it's very quiet and Smarties like this and I thought all right okay so it was very I thought was maybe Chris he was doing either Edith Wharton period movie which was kind of out of character for him but he said he always worked like that so I was very struck how different there was but thank you for that question I also had the great pleasure of watching a short film that you were in called Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life that was nominated for Oscar short in the 90s I think 95 anyone and it won for Peter Capaldi the writer/director yeah because I feel like there's a fallacy sometimes with actors and filmmakers that you make a short at the beginning of your career and then you make features you don't need to do the short that's your calling card so what was it that made you want to creatively do that short film and how did you end up being connected with Peter does anybody know who Peter Capaldi is in this room he was Doctor Who anyway Peter and I had been friends for 20 years he was doing an Agatha Christie play in the West End Peter said he'd because he felt so stymied and creatively you know annihilated by a being in an Agatha Christie play being third killer or victim from a left he wrote Franz Kafka it's a wonderful life mixing metamorphosis with the Capra movie and I play Franz Kafka so so we did that and I will be shot for a weekend see there was no money and then it got it won this the best short film Oscar in 1994 and he got a contract with the Weinstein brothers who paid him a lot of money rent a stage actor at that point and greenlit a movie that he was going to write his written and directed for them and was flown over first class to New York and there had a party for him in London saying we've green-lipped your movie you just have to go and sign on the dotted line with Harvey and Bob in New York and he got picked up by a limo from JFK and the limo driver kept ticking over when he got out at the Weinstein building and he said no no go away because I'm gonna be here for a few hours and they said no no I've been told to wait so Peter thought I okay so he goes upstairs meets Bob Weinstein he said we're not making a movie so Peter started laughing and he said you haven't found me here first-class and give me a party in London to do that he said no your movies dead it's in turnaround it's never gonna be made and you owe us this amount of money because we spent all his money on your movie and Peter said what what what what do you mean when did was did when was the decision made he said halfway through your journey across the Atlantic he got back in the limo and was flown back in coach on the way back and it took him more than a decade to psychologically recover from that from that bruising experience of you know having Mindy got an Oscar and you know his whole future as a director it seemed so ready to happen and then of course that script got put in turnaround and nobody would buy it anyway that's Peter story but so that's a very long answer to your short question anyway mr. Weinstein is possibly facing jail and Peter's on the App there's retribution there's always a silver lining it just might take 20 years yeah and that wasn't never give up that wasn't your final crossover with potential doctor who world so you've been involved in Doctor Who in a variety of different facets voicing an animated series also as part of a comic relief special the comic relief special was really interesting to me so it's every year in the UK I think they've launched it over here now and it's basically a whole evening of entertainment to raise money for a charity and they put together an entire kind of stand alone but comedic episode but it was very much in line with the actual show with their producers and writers from the show itself that were involved in the creation of that to make sure that it was kind of not making light of or making fun of the show in a way that they didn't feel was appropriate Richard Curtis who founded comic relief wrote this spoof script of this mini episode in which there were nine doctors including Jim Broadbent Hugh crowd exactly all of them please answer your phone if could be your agent seriously I'm always on the alert [Music] Richard Curtis wrote who wrote for rings and funeral he wrote the script and obviously got permission from the Doctor Who viens to do that so that was as much as my leader was a couple of hours in an afternoon that I can't even remember till you've mentioned it now he's I'm so old I mean how was your experience when you came into the actual series itself and you're playing a villain on it knowing that it's such a revered and part of the institution of the cultural institution in the UK well I'd love Matt Smith I'd seen him in a play called that face when he was 19 years old at the Royal Court Theatre and everybody around us knew that Polly stone and the writer had a big future and that Matt Smith just had that whatever that thing is that you just wanted to watch him so it was amazing to meet him then when he was a kind of you know why dad our journey of how do you think I mean I have a future kind of thing to then being on Doctor Who where he was sort of globally known from playing that iconic TV character so it was a Christmas special and I played somebody who didn't smile so my tombstone features came into good good use at that point but I don't really remember very much about it at all but I know there are people who are fanatical about it in the exact same way there was Star Wars my wife said to me hand on heart she said I've never seen Star Wars I don't will I will never see it even though you're in it and I don't care who you're playing when I said I can't tell you why I'm playing because I'm going to strict rules she said well if you tell me I won't even remember so it seems to me the world is divided up into you know the Star Wars and the Doctor Who viens who are fanatical about this and the rest of the planet who couldn't give a flying tinker's you know you're gonna be talking about Star Wars until the day you die after being in the film oh okay because you're always the same as with now you're always going to be asked about it okay alright so I would be remiss if I didn't mention sadly what is one of my favorite movies which is spice world the movie oh oh I had sir there were so many snooty actors and reviewers who said oh my god you're beneath yourself and I said my eight-year-old daughter was so mad keen that I do spice well the movie I just turned 40 they were all 20 they just invented viagra not that I've needed it yet and it was like the best living viagra you could have to go to work every day and have these twenty-year-old incredibly you know exuberant young women grabbing my bum and can I go come on old rich it was just fantastic and yeah the fast Ford of all that is I made so much money out of the movie because I was in a good residual deal for once and who knew that 25 years later somebody called Lena Dunham would write four episodes of girls for me to be in because of being in spiceworld the movie and Adele who with whom I share a birthday but not the same bank balance sadly sent me tickets to go and see her show that was all sold out because she was a spice world fanatic so fuck'em I know that you ultimately did the film because your daughter was such a die-hard fan and wouldn't let you turn it down but I'm very intrigued because the tone of it's very tongue-in-cheek and it's kind of winking at the audience all way through how is it pitched to you what was what was it that they told you about your character in a way that they were going to present the story you will be the manic manager of the Spice Girls and you will have six body form-fitting satin suits I said what's not to like and I said and they also paid me a large Bosh of money so I said yes and what was so hilarious is that on the first day they had five huge Winnebagos you know for each of them and the biggest one that I've ever been in and by lunch time they said we don't want to be in these things I was thrilled to be in mind I look down hello oh good fight people round and that Lobster on the on the food cart the first day of hell they're spending big bucks on this and all the Spice Girls got together and they were in one Winnie Baker because they wanted to share so they saved a lot of money by getting rid of the other four and they said mr. grant would you care to get I said no no I'm in mind one for the entire duration so one in no time and because you briefly mentioned the residuals that you got from that film I was really surprised to see an interview a mentioned you actually didn't get any residuals from with now and yet you've remained incredibly involved in the zeitgeist of it and a couple years ago you took part in BFI screening that was for the anniversary has there ever been a moment where you felt resentful of the fact that you didn't get a continued paycheck from this movie that's had such success over the years it's double-edged because it has completely given me my career and the irony of playing an out-of-work actor which has led to every job that I've ever got subsequently I am forever grateful for and the friendship that I have with the cast who is still living who is who haven't died yet although we are on a sort of Agatha Christie who's next seriously and my lifelong friendship with the writer/director Bruce Robinson has countered that but unfortunately our equity union is so weak in England they signed over years ago decades ago to American studios coming to make movies in England whereby there were no residuals so that I never I have never got one dime of residual from Western Illinois and it plays on television in England literally on a daily basis and has been re-released twice in the cinema we've never got name money because the ownership of the rights have gone on to five different companies so I have met people that have made good money out of doing the movie who have had nothing to do with it whatsoever but that's just the way that it is so you have to win a colonial situation I know what we did to America so maybe it's payback time that's you know where's your sag contract I'm so grateful for any sag contract work that I've done I get residuals you know I'm still getting money from Dracul and stuff that I did you know 100 years ago whereas any English movie you get nothing and for sore point so understandably say one of the things I was really intrigued to discover in my dive on the internet was a song that you did with Orpheus in 1997 and it was a song called to be or not to be where you basically were reciting the famous speech from Hamlet and I was very curious about how you got lured into that and what made you want to do that I can only also by saying that if anybody's been forced into doing a nude photo shoot or a nude scene that's what it felt like I think I was conned into doing it somebody said would you do this with a beat going in the background of to be or not to be and then they they shmoop dit round and then the next thing I found out they'd released this poor bastard it was diabolical so I think John Gielgud would probably swivel in his grave if he had hurt I have heard my rendition of it but thank you for bringing that up some of the things I thought quite interesting to discover some of the TV series thank you I'll just leave it on the track lamp sitting here thinking what are you gonna come up with next do you always feel that way when you're being interviewed whether you bring up things like that that's the first that's the first for me okay I was very interested in watching Richard he grants Hotel secrets series that you did where you traveled around many different countries what I liked about it in the couple of episodes I was watching was that use it really as a vehicle to tell stories about space and the people that you interviewed how did that entire project come about and what did you want to bring to that storytelling because it are done he's ever shown here it was it was a series called Hotel secrets made for a Sky Atlantic television channel in England whereby they it was the Jamis job ever as you can imagine I was sent round to the most expensive hotels on the planet with no script and given free rein to interview anybody that had a story connected to the hotel so I interviewed everybody from Heidi flesh in Nevada to Donald Trump in the Trump Tower before was the president which was something else I never forget the smell of Elnett have your hairspray as he came into the room oh my god and because I'm a nosey Parker I I was given free rein to ask any question that I wanted so it was unscripted and I got to stay in the most luxurious beds on the planet and get paid for it at the end it was a jammy estaba ver and we did two series of it and that changed the commissioning editor and so that was the end of it anyway it's endlessly plays online on YouTube and stuff so people think that I'm still in these hotels living in them forever and another thing that you hosted for a couple of years was the penguin podcast where you put on different musicians and authors and they were talked about they were kind of select select objects that had informed them creatively in storytelling what was it that you thought was so interesting about having people come talk about objects and what hortence have they had on your creative career if any I think that more than anything if you speak to and this applies to everybody that I've worked with at the at the top of the pile meryl streep on the iron lady down to somebody who is Matt Smith at the beginning of his career is that the common denominator is that the people that in my experience have been the most successful work harder than anybody else they put in more and they bring more without exception I've never seen somebody who's just been able to phone it in and still be brilliant they've always even though the work may not show they're there first and they leave last and when I was interviewing authors for their books or musicians this same thing came out and I was very struck by new york-based philosopher writer journalist called Malcolm Gladwell he's written blink and various books of essays and he wrote one I think called tipping point of success in which he he tried to scientifically break down how somebody became an overnight success and he took the Beatles for example and various people that have been successful at in in different industries aspects of life and he said essentially boils down to somebody has put in 10,000 hours before they became an overnight success the Beatles for instance worked in the cavern club and they were in Berlin doing their shows twice nightly for almost two years you know honing that skill in front of an audience so in relation to all of that the situation that we've got now or to a lesser extent of reality television where somebody goes from an audition cattle market to being on television and to becoming famous within six to twelve weeks and then wondering why the they fall off the Grand Canyon into ignominy and anonymity all over again and just dumped by a record company nothing prepares people for that because it seems to me that if whatever you call this invisible thing is that is talent if that is worked and you've put in the 10,000 hours there is a good chance that that is going to have a payoff and almost without exception all the authors and musicians that I interviewed attested to that that this was a childhood passion or something if they had their puts a huge annum number of man women hours transgender hours into into achieving what they what they wanted so that's what I got from that and does that go into individual roles that you're doing in there you want to maniacally prepare so that when you show up on set you know that you have that background and that wealth of experience already even before the cameras are rolling you try to but it every job is is dependent if you get cast as I have been sometimes two days before but somebody's dropped out or dropped out or whatever or you're you've you've replaced some actor at all properly you've replaced somebody and I'm not drunk maybe your life experience has prepared you but what I think is the terror and also the beauty of the job that we do is that every job you start almost what you've done before is an impediment because you're trying not to repeat or be expected to do the same thing or somebody said well don't do that because I've seen that before I want something different or new so you've got to be as open-minded and open-hearted to the thing as you possibly can be so I don't know that preparation in that sense really does affect you and I know that in the case of can you ever forgive me has anybody seen that movie in this room okay thank you well you'll appreciate this that I met Melissa McCarthy on a Friday the 20th of January 2017 and for two hours and we started shooting the story of this but tonic yeah into the penile relationship um on Monday two days later so you have to sort of fast forward into an intimacy and be open with a person that to affect what this friendship is very very quickly no matter preparation can do that that's just luck as much as anything that you chemically have this reaction with another human being and you hope that that feeling of love and enjoyment of the other person's personality transmits through the characters that you're playing on the screen what was something with conversations that the two of you had on that first day when you met knowing this is our any moment to really do this before we're doing it for the cameras well I saw at the Golden Globes where she had a couple of scotches and she turned and said to me during one of the commercial break she said do you know that when I first before I met you on that Friday I thought that you would be a really snotty very serious uptight long face resting face that I have that you would be somebody that was you know cold and remote and technical and all these things I said well why don't you just stop me being cast she's hip no the casting power I said oh if you had you would have dumped me she said maybe so what her expectation was and who I then turned out to be surprised her and I suppose in the same way that I had wondered whether playing Lee Israel and seeing the trajectory of her career in the movies hadn't seen Gilmore Girls whether this would be a comic vehicle for the Melissa McCarthy persona that has come to be in in her movies and I realized very very quickly that she lowered her voice her center of gravity shifted she was wearing a wig that had gray roots and she was a thousand percent committed to inhabiting Lee Israel without a smidgen of sentimentality or trying to be lovable to an audience so that surprised me that she was so invested in doing that so we both surprised each other anyway we stayed good friends and she had my twins in the fall thanks for coming she was obviously playing a character that had a wealth of information and in you know books that she'd written and a lot of source material in playing Lea but there was very little that was known about Jack so you didn't have very much to go on and building your character so did you feel any responsibility to the authenticity of who he was or you just felt like you really needed to interpret it and create your own vision of who he was well Nicole hollow Center and Jeff would he script was you know that's the roadmap of how clear the thing was I also knew from the memoir that Jack Hawke had a little stubby cigarette holder that he used and I thought well that suggests a kind of certain Peter O'Toole ish self-image of flamboyance around chrome and shwedish that he had an Arden the brilliant costume designer gave me Nero Matic Spandau Ballet clothes from the early 80s that were now threadbare on an advanced middle aged man in the early 90s so that helped a lot of just to give me the kind of street smarts that there's a destitute man was living his life like that the other thing that I found unnerving is that he died at the age of 47 was tall blond from Portland in Oregon I'm saying like you don't know where Oregon is so there were no photographs of him nobody that were that were friends with Jack Hawke were survived aids so from that I gleaned that he probably been disowned or just abandoned by his family and as the the titles at the end revealed that he was finally looked after by the gay men and women lesbians but comedic grouping you you yeah you're saying all the words for me he was looked after by them in his final days so the other thing that I got from Leigh's memoir is that once she had been rumbled by the FBI and was using Jack to fence these remaining letters that she had she would think that he would get four to five hundred bucks for one he'd come back with two thousand even if he skimmed off the top so I I thought from that this is somebody that knows how to go out there and have the street smarts to kind of lent her and you know weave his way around people's pockets and hearts so I thought that that gave me a feeling of confidence to try and to try and do that as much as possible yeah and how much do the locations help you in terms of character and story as well you know obviously there's the juxtaposition of sometimes you are in films where you're working against a green-screen backdrop but with can you ever forgive me you were really in some of the actual locations in some of the bookstores that were real life from he had fleeced everything was on location and all the books that we used many of them were the places where they had actually committed their fraudulent activity so hahaha you know there's nothing I'm obsessed with smell and taste and texture of everything so to go into a bookstore especially as they're now you know rare commodities the smell and the feel and the just everything about them of being going going Auto chef and taking something out and not knowing what is in there and the squeaky floorboards and just the whole atmosphere of them is so unique right up my streets so I thought we are walking in the footsteps of where these people actually lived and operated and most especially being in a dualist bar was the oldest gay bar in Manhattan needs to tell you and that it looked as it did look in the nineties when they were there and sitting in the seats that they sat in you felt like you you kind of were were being as authentic as you possibly could be to people that had lived and honoring their memory and the fact that the dualist bar was so generous in allowing these to reprobates to be filmed in their bar I thought was a measure of their generosity and acceptance of you know two people that were regulars there that had now passed was part of the appeal of the film that it's very unusual to have a film at mystic from Hollywood in this day and age that has one LGBTQ lead let alone two there's nothing you know it's not about their romantic lives that's just a facet of who they are the story is actually about their lives as a bigger whole was that part of the appealing aspect when you first read the script for it I loved that I thought that was such a smart thing that they are who they are it wasn't there was never an issue made I said this before and I don't mean to be rude about this but there was never a point in the screenplay or in Mariel Hellas wonderful direction where Maria Callas or Judy Garland were coming on to the soundtrack to can I go this is what you should feel here folks it was just that is who they are the fact that she was lesbian that he was gay seemed just there was no explanation there was no it was just who they are and I love that about it because I thought that was such a smart thing because it meant that you lived or you identified or didn't with the loneliness and the relationship that they formed it wasn't it didn't have anything to do with the kind of label of who they were I thought that was really smart and it's more of our time than if this movie had been made 15 or 20 years ago very different and the film was shot an incredibly short amount of time in just about six weeks a VESA 26 days 26 days there are certain things when you're shooting on such a short schedule that cause challenges for you you know maybe you don't have the time to do more takes if you want to but are there is it was so freeing at the same point because you just have to get on with it keep going well that's the gift of of Mariel heller who's lived in Brooklyn and she always during the first thing in the morning she would set up that the crew would be you know sent to breakfast and whoever the actors were on the scene would rehearse it and find whatever they thought the scene was even if it took sometimes two hours to do that and then bring the crew back and people would get slightly grumpy saying what the we've been waiting waiting waiting but the payoff was that because we then knew exactly what we were doing they could see it in one rehearsal so it meant that the shooting bit was was much quicker and unlike a movie that has big crowds or special effects or car chases or her stuff that you know takes up so many movies now there were never scenes that had really more than two or three people talking to each other so that limits how much you can shoot the thing you don't need cranes and dollies and you know CGI and green-screen all that stuff to do it but you're dealing with you know talking heads so we never ever felt rushed I'm sure that the producers were pulling their hair out and going we're never gonna make this in time but Mario Heller who wears her authorities so likely and is so open and collaborative and nurturing all the things that you long for in a director she created an environment where we felt there was always time to do it one things I'm intrigued about as well is a lot has been made of the fact that Melissa McCarthy's playing an unlikable woman and that seems to be a thing that comes up a lot people watch the favorite and they're like oh these women aren't likable but we like watching them and that's become a big conversation in entertainment and in film particularly recently you mean if Michael Douglas is playing the part there'd be no could be no problem he was playing commercial but what I'm actually interested about in is that I think what's great about it is it shows that we're getting more rich female characters on screen and that that is shifting and changing in Hollywood has that made it more interesting as a male actor getting to play against these types of characters instead of characters that used to be a little bit more two-dimensional oh yes if you appreciate the difference I had just a couple of months before I did started this film I was on Logan opposite Hugh Jackman and 300 guys it was shot in the south and it was so testosteron you know people were getting up at 4:00 in the morning go to the gym and they had arms bigger than my thighs put together you know there was stunt guys had their cranes and trucks and was like it was all that was going on as you can see I was sort of pipe cleaner girly boy you know I didn't really fit into that world so going to a female-dominated crew co-written script by woman female lead character female director female producers it felt like you really were nurtured and looked after and all of that stuff which is not to say that there was you were mothballed or cotton-wool you know it wasn't soft in that way but it was the contrast and the emphasis on the emotional content of what we were doing and therefore that makes the characters feel like they're three-dimensional as opposed to having a gum and having a dot here which you know there's an explosions gonna come out my brain in post store you have to walk around I care about all that stuff it was an enormous delight to do this film compared to the other one I wanted to I've got very good residuals on Logan I'm so grateful for my older age and he was fantastic you know he's absolutely wonderful to work with I wanted to ask you questions that we have from our audience here which you can't be wonderful if you're getting 65 million dollars for a movie don't you think makes it easier I have a question from addy which is what's the most random way that you've ever gotten a gig where where where are you who's asked the question what's the most random whether you've got a gig okay I was I had done a movie called how to get ahead in advertising playing man with her two heads she talked thank you and as I was walking out of the premiere screening in London manner and a cap baseball cap said to me hey I'm Steve Martin I said oh really oh you are Steve Martin he said yeah I'm doing a movie called la story and there's a part in it would you read it and would you do it I said yes I will and then the second most random one was I was at the premiere of Hudson Hawk which we already I'd seen it it was such a dog and I thought I genuinely Hannah Hart thought I would never ever work in Los Angeles ever again and I got a tap on the shoulder Robert Altman sitting with Tim Robbins and I said I said what are you guys doing here they said we're doing risk research I said research he said yeah on how Hollywood works and I said Bob you do not have his already met him I said you do not need to do this because I'd been on a movie that then collapsed a couple years before and I said I will never if you sit through this movie you will never speak to me again because it's so bad and I'm even worse in it and he said I don't care and he leant forward and he said I'm doing a movie called the player and I want you to play a screenwriter who sells his soul to the devil in it will you do it and I said yes for nothing he said even better so that was the those are the two most random things that I've had but thank you I'm glad yours worked out you had to wait for years okay thanks for the question our next one is from Darren hope so long sorry who's asking is there a dream role that you would still like to play in your career the one that's being written right now somewhere who just thinks that's the guy that I want to have in this movie and we'll completely surprise me yep I'd yep of that from JD was wondering what's the favorite role that you've ever gotten to do and why out of all of them what I find watching myself in something so excruciatingly that I never believe that I may be another job but so writing and directing a movie about my very dysfunctional childhood adolescence was the most creatively satisfying because I was in charge of the writing and going back as a middle-aged man post psychoanalysis to recreate my childhood with an amazing cast in the locations where all of this stuff happened to me so that was the thing that I feel I have had the most fulfillment out of because you will know as an actor you have no control whereas there's a writer director you can't control the distribution or how people going to react to the movie but 120 people ask you on a daily basis do you want this here or do you want that there do you want this like that and you have do you have to have answers and I love that because I'm a control freak and detail obsessive but thank you for question have you been tempted to direct any other projects and given that while I was about your own personal life would you be interested in directing stories outside of yeah I have and I've had two other indie movies that collapsed for weeks before we started shooting because the last 10% of the financed eluded us what having told we got it and then eluded us so I'd like to do it again but I don't know how many years I've got left as I'm about to crack 62 I wanted to end by just asking you about the awards circuit that you've been on the last few months I know that you've mentioned that this has been one of the first times that you've really had to go and do one of the first it's the only time has never happened to me nobody nominated for anything so I was just curious having been through it over the last few months and we're in the final homestretch of it what have been some of your favorite moments along the way and experiences of doing this it's been absolutely astonishing and the generosity of Americans towards a non-american has absolutely overwhelming oh I'm gonna cry going to the Governor's Ball which was the honorary Oscars for people that knew that already won Tyson and Shiffrin and I can't remember who else was there that night and I was standing with Melissa McCarthy and a voice very loud voice said to me you are perfect your movie is perfect and was Tom Hanks says has Tom Hanks here and directly behind him was Steven Spielberg that was a completely discombobulating surreal upside-down inducing experience and then Melissa and I did a sort of victory toward felt like going around the room and you know Clint Eastwood oh how do you do Lady gaga how do you do Oprah Winfrey how do you do and then you know being at the Golden Globes on Sunday nights and people said oh you know you must feel so bad that you didn't win I said didn't win I was in the room I was nominated I was sitting at a table next to Emily Blunt and opposite Dick Van Dyke that's win-win-win so thank you thank you very much for having me thank you so much

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 22,428

Rating: 4.9235668 out of 5

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, Actors, Star Wars: Episode IX, Can You Ever Forgive Me, Q&A, Interview, Career, Retrospective, Richard E. Grant, Richard, Grant

Id: cL33rYV7_gc

Length: 66min 37sec (3997 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 18 2019