Richard E Grant

Gloucestershire-based actor is hosting the star-studded award ceremony.

We’re doomed"](https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/shoppers-react-supermarket-tomato-shortage-8165607) [The hidden Cotswold village with a hint of the south of France](https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/hidden-cotswold-village-hint-south-8139242) [Body found in search for Nicola Bulley](https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/body-found-search-nicola-bulley-8165958) [What is that giant metal structure going up near the A417?](https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/what-giant-metal-structure-going-8165498) [Police warning to Clarkson's Farm shoppers over parking](https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/regional-news/police-warning-clarksons-farm-shoppers-8165955) [Shoppers react as supermarket tomato shortage sweeps Gloucestershire and beyond: "OMG! except on the back.” Smith stormed onto the stage during the 94th annual Academy Awards in March and slapped presenter Chris Rock after the comedian made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith. Bafta host Richard E Grant referenced Will Smith’s infamous slap at last year’s Oscars, as he opened the 2023 ceremony in London. “To each and everyone here tonight, I want you to know that my favourite film of the year is whichever one you made – it really touched me in a way that none of the others did,” he joked.

BAFTA host Richard E. Grant gave a riproaring open to the 2023 BAFTA show.

Addressing the guests in his monologue, he said, “Everyone here started with one lucky break,” before telling a story about how Withnail and I only came to him after Daniel Day-Lewis turned it down. “Start working out your monologue at least a year in advance”; “Don’t pick a fight with Judi Dench”; and “Don’t invest in Helen Mirren’s cryptocurrency, she’s a scammer.” Grant](https://deadline.com/tag/richard-e-grant/) rocked up to the 2023 [BAFTA](https://deadline.com/tag/bafta/) Film Awards in the Batmobile at the advice of Steve Martin, he revealed in a video skit that kicked off his BAFTA monologue tonight.

Speaking to Sarfraz Manzoor in Radio Times magazine, Richard E Grant discusses his life, career and his "dream come true" of hosting the BAFTA Film Awards.

"I saw the cost of divorce, because my father suffered unrequited love for my mother and essentially drank himself to death," he says. "So I thought the best way to protect myself was to never get married, and to never fall in love. "I’m just nervous about BAFTA putting a clause in my contract that I can’t walk around the Royal Festival Hall with my camera, taking selfies with people who I’ve long admired," he says. You could actually go and sit at the desk, and sit in the boat. At the end of the course, his professor told him he didn’t think Grant was likely to succeed as an actor "because I was very odd-looking, with a very odd face". "But it got a long life as a result of video and DVD and a sort of student cult following. Undeterred, Grant left Swaziland and arrived in Britain in the spring of 1982, working in a brasserie in London’s Covent Garden while trying to secure acting work. Living in Swaziland – the smallest country in the southern hemisphere – the idea of pursuing acting as a career was "completely fantastical and ludicrous", and not exactly welcomed by his father, a heavy drinking government administrator. With the vogue for Marvel and superhero stuff, to see a movie that is a real character study is something that I hadn’t expected would come around again so soon." Grant saw the film – but when he returned home his drunken father was so angry at him, he put a gun to his son’s temple and took a shot. Since his breakout role in Withnail & I in 1986, Grant has become one of the most established actors in Britain, appearing in such films and TV shows as LA Story, The Player, Gosford Park, Downton Abbey and the aforementioned Can You Ever Forgive Me?, for which he received his first Oscar and BAFTA nominations. "It is so local and specific to Ireland, and a chamber piece where not really a lot happens – but everything happens.

Smith stormed onto the stage during the 94th annual Academy Awards in March and slapped presenter Chris Rock after the comedian made a joke about his wife Jada ...

except on the back.” Speaking at the Baftas, Grant said that the only slaps being received on Sunday would be “on the back”. “What a great year to be hosting the Baftas,” he said.

Richard's wife Joan Washington, a voice coach to celebrities including Penelope Cruz and Jessica Chastain, died in September 2021 after being diagnosed with ...

But he then clarified the film was eligible thanks to financing from "Let's take a moment to remember them now." Richard E Grant became emotional and struggled to hold back tears as he introduced the in memoriam section of the BAFTA ceremony to remember those in the film industry who died in the last 12 months.

Richard E. Grant has spoken about how lonely he is since the death of his beloved wife Joan, but the actor has found comfort in writing a book inspired by ...

Ricard also became stepfather to Joan’s son, Tom. “I was working at Shepperton and I got a call to say that Joan was in an ambulance. Richard added: “I think that sort of thing either splits a couple up, because that person doesn’t come up with the compassion or support you need, or it binds you in a way that nothing else can.” [The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/), he said: “When I was away I spoke to her on the phone a lot and wrote every day – and I couldn’t think of a better way of making some kind of commitment. [The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/), he said: “Our worst time was the loss of our first child. The couple tied the knot in 1986 and went on to have a daughter, Olivia. [admitted being in a “well of grief”](https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/richard-e-grant-admits-well-28325715) after nursing his dialect coach wife - who he affectionately called Monkee-mine - until she [died at their Cotswolds cottage](https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/breaking-richard-e-grants-wife-24901338) at the age of 71. [Radio Times](https://www.radiotimes.com/), Richard revealed the hardest part of his day is in the evening. He shared: “It was healing because once you’ve dealt with the funeral and the bureaucracy of death – you have to fill in forms. Joan was in fact married to someone else at the time, but she fell “madly in love” with Richard while giving him private acting lessons and they eventually became a couple. [They even got a royal visitor in the form as King Charles](https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/richard-e-grants-wife-secret-24960554), then the Prince of Wales, who the couple befriended some 20 years earlier at Highgrove. Grant](https://www.irishmirror.ie/all-about/richard-e-grant) lost his beloved wife of 35 years [Joan Washington](https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/breaking-richard-e-grants-wife-24901338) to lung cancer in September 2021.