Richard E Grant was born in Swaziland, now Eswatini, one of the smallest countries in Africa, and took his first steps as an actor as a teenager in the local amateur theatre company.

He studied Drama and English at Cape Town University in South Africa, and moved to London in 1982, hoping to find work as an actor, with - in his words - 'nothing more than a couple of suitcases, a boxful of music cassettes and blind ambition.' He worked as a waiter to pay the bills, until his very first film role, in Withnail and I, launched his acting career.

Since then, he has appeared in a very wide range of films, with roles in How to Get Ahead in Advertising, The Player, Jack and Sarah, Logan and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, as well as the Star Wars series. He was nominated for an Oscar in 2019 for his role in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Richard has been a lifelong diarist and has published three collections of memoirs. His most recent book chronicles his long and happy marriage to his wife, the dialect coach Joan Washington, who died from cancer in 2021.

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Presenter Lauren Laverne