Richard E. Grant (1957-) b. Mbabane, Swaziland.

Grant was born in Mbabane, Swaziland and studied English and Drama at University in Capetown. In 1982, he moved to London to stomp the boards in fringe and repertory productions. Grant made his television debut in Les Blair’s improvisational satire for the BBC, Honest, Decent and True (1985). The next year, he entered films as the star of Withnail & I (1986), writer-director Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical rites of passage story of two eccentric and unemployed English actors in the 1960s. He teamed up with Robinson once again for the genuinely hilarious How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1988), a biting satire of the industry’s morals or lack thereof.

Hollywood came calling in the 1990s, and Grant’s early roles included the sexually ambivalent ex-husband in Steve Martin’s satiric valentine to his hometown, L.A. Story (1991), and a bitter experience playing the mad English villain opposite Bruce Willis in the much-maligned Hudson Hawk (1991). Better fare was his supporting role as the uncompromising English filmmaker in Robert Altman’s superb Hollywood satire The Player (1992), and Francis Ford Coppola’s extravagant Bram Stoker adaptation, Dracula (1992), as recruited vampire hunter Dr. Seward. He subsequently worked with another iconic director in Martin Scorsese, in the opulent adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1993), as a smug member of 19th century New York’s high society.

He returned to England to portray a grieving widower coping with a newborn in the romantic comedy-drama Jack & Sarah (1995), and featured in two BBC television Dennis Potter dramas; Karaoke (1996) and Cold Lazarus (1996). He teamed up again with Robert Altman for a third time to play the lecherous footman in the ensemble murder-mystery Gosford Park (2002), and appeared in another period piece when cast in Stephen Fry’s directorial debut Bright Young Things (2003). In 2006, he made his directorial debut with Wah-Wah (2006), a touching account of his childhood growing up in Swaziland at the end of the 1960s.