Career
Grant was a member of the Space Theatre Company in Cape Town before moving to London in 1982. He later stated:
I grew up in Swaziland when it was mired in a 1960s sensibility. The kind of English spoken where I grew up was a period English sound and when I came to England people said 'how strange'. Charles Sturridge, who directed Brideshead Revisited for TV, said 'you speak English like someone from the 1950s'.Grant's first film role was the perpetually inebriated title character in Withnail and I, which has established a large cult following. During the story his character drinks from a bottle of lighter fluid, which the set crew had intentionally filled with vinegar prior to filming. His reaction in the film was genuine.
Following his film Withnail and I, Grant began appearing in Hollywood films, and quickly established himself as a powerful character actor in a wide array of films, from blockbuster studio movies to small independent projects. Over the past twenty years, Grant has had strong supporting roles in the films Henry & June, L.A. Story, The Player, The Age of Innocence, The Portrait of a Lady, Spice World, Gosford Park, Bright Young Things, and Penelope.
Grant has twice portrayed the Doctor from Doctor Who, unofficially on both occasions. In the comedy sketch Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, he portrayed a version of the Tenth Doctor, referred to as the Quite Handsome Doctor. He also voiced a version of the Ninth Doctor for the BBC original animated webcast Scream of the Shalka. In August, 2012, the BBC announced that Grant would join the cast of Doctor Who for the show's 2012 Christmas Special, in which he plays a villain.
On 1 December 2006, Grant turned real life investigator when, with the help of BBC Newsnight, he exposed a $98 million scam to sell a bogus AIDS cure.
Grant appeared as "The Voice" in 2+2+2 at American Nights at The King's Head Theatre, from 3 July to 29 July 2007, and also recently co-starred in the London-based comedy Filth and Wisdom, a film which marks the directorial debut of pop singer Madonna.
On 22 November 2007, he gave a keynote speech at North London Collegiate School in North London as part of their Performing Arts Centre Opening Festival, and presented the 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards.
In 2008, he made his musical theatre debut with Opera Australia, playing the role of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, at the Theatre Royal, Sydney.
Grant is also an author, having written an autobiography and a novel called By Design that is set in Hollywood.
Richard E. Grant is a mentor on the British Airways Great Britons Programme, and will mentor a British talent to write a script that will be produced into a short film and shown on BA flights and at the pre-opening of the Olympic Games ceremony.
Read more about this topic: Richard E. Grant
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