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Overview
Richard E. Grant’s acting career has included memorable roles in some of Hollywood’s most critically acclaimed films, including Robert Altman’s Gosford Park and Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. But he attributes his success to his first film role, starring as a flamboyantly pathetic Shakespearean in the underground hit Withnail and I. As Grant explains, “I had no notion that, almost without exception, every film offered since would be the result of playing an alcoholic out-of-work actor.”
In With Nails, Grant shares his long, maddening, and immensely rewarding journey through the world of film. From the hell of making Hudson Hawk to befriending Steve Martin on the set of L.A. Story; and from eating spaghetti with the Coppolas, to window-shopping with Sharon Stone, and working with and learning from the best actors and directors in the business, Grant’s unvarnished memoir “is a biting and wonderfully funny look at the movie business by an actor who is as clear-eyed and observant about himself as he is about the craziness surrounding him” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468302363 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ABRAMS, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 704,565 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Withnail and I
Winter 1985
WANTED: BOY DANCERS IN DUBAI – NO PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE NECESSARY
This ad appeared in the Stage newspaper in a prominent black box on the vacancies pages and probably still does. After nine months of resting, dancing in Dubai begins to seem like a serious option. I get to checking that the ad is still there every week with the vague panic that should they finally fulfil their dancing quota it will be withdrawn, and with it my last chance of keeping the Equity card.
At the close of Orwell's BIG eighty-four, prospects had seemed swimming: a Plays and Players Promising Newcomer nomination, and a role in Les Blair's satire about advertising for the BBC, Honest, Decent and True. Having emigrated to England from Swaziland in 1982 and done waitering, farting around in profit share, the Fringe and a couple of stints in rep, this television break seemed the ticket. I had a sense that it would open up some possibility somewhere. The transmission date – June 1985 – became a fixed point, with every chip of hope stacked for the big gamble. It was then delayed by six months and I couldn't get out of bed. At least, not the day the news came.
Such is my state of mind that when I chance upon one of those magazine surveys that states your ideal body weight for your height and type, I realize that at six foot two, of medium build, I ought to weigh twelve stone rather than eleven. I hatch a plan to find a way to gain the poundage and pump the iron. My wife, Joan, whose patience is bubble-gum stretched by now, tells me about Dreas Reyneke, the body trainer who transformed Christopher Lambert into Tarzan for Greystoke. I discover he was from South Africa and grew up two hundred miles from where I did in Swaziland.
I have never drunk milk before, and its nausea-inducing niff mixed with weight-gain powder requires a nose-peg to get it down my gullet. But, gradually, flesh grows where only ribcage has mirrored back before. Dreas teams me up with his most macho body-building client, Richard La Plante, who sees my sand-in-the-face prospects as a challenge to overcome, and has me Tarzaning along the bars in no time. I'm soon flexing and plexing my pecs in a T-shirt. The ritual of pumping and pushing gives some vague purpose to the week, and I spend the rest of the time either staring into space in the middle of a room or clacking out a play about the sexual shenanigans of life in colonial Swaziland, titled Bongo Bongo. It sits like an embarrassment in a lowly drawer and hasn't been looked at since.
Marooned, becalmed, beached and increasingly bleached of self-confidence, the magazine rack at my local W. H. Smith's provides some escape. You can stand there for half a day riffling and reading through all their publications. I sometimes make a mental inventory of fellow readers and regulars and assume that they, too, are among the 95 per cent, forty-thousand-odd unemployed members of Equity. Even Fisherman's Monthly starts to seem subscribable. Finally I pay for a newspaper, to reassure myself that at least W. H. had earned something despite my liberties at the Rack. How can Richmond be so full of people during working hours? On any given day, you'd swear that no one works at all. And I'm not talking about the OAP gangs. The where is everybody going, and what for and why questions burn away. This existential reverie is interrupted all too infrequently by a call from my agent with news of an audition for something humiliating.
'Know Frankenstein?'
'Yes ... well, I've read it but not recently.'
'Got a pen? The BBC Religious Department are doing a drama-doc in Wales looking at the dialectics, I think that's what they said, of Faith and Medical Advances. Not quite sure, but they're interviewing for monsters. On the fifteenth floor at TV Centre – no, hang on, I think it's the other building next to Shepherd's Bush Theatre where they do Wogan. You know. I'll just check on that and call you right back.'
Frankenstein's fucking Monster. Has the woman lost her marble collection? I'm the original eleven stone weakling (though the weight-gain powder is edging things out a bit). What the fuck can she be thinking?
I head for the building next to the Wogan theatre, and meet the director in a cramped office occupied by two typists, clacking out bulletins and contracts.
'Would you mind taking off your shirt?'
'What, here?'
'Yes, sorry, but the normal interview room is being rewired.'
This is a first. As my buttons obey, the two typers' eyeballs shift briefly upwards without missing a beat. Standing in a room with three strangers, in fluorescent light, shirt off, being appraised for Frank's monster by a stick-insect in a cardigan induces something like self-consciousness.
'Thank you. Could you read a couple of pages for me?'
My relief at buttoning up again is matched by the disappointment in his eyes – my torso had clearly not been up to par. Thoughts of Why didn't you start the weight-gain powder at fourteen, boy, scurry round my skull.
'In this scene, the monster argues with, and then attacks, the doctor. Just take your time and then have a go.'
'Will you be reading the doctor?'
'Yes, but I can't act so don't be put off. In your own time.'
Even I am startled by the Exorcist gutturals that issue forth from my gizzard. Aside from Linda Blair's 360 degree head- swivels and green projectile vomitings, I am monstrous and possessed. The sound of typing stops. Eyes stare and when I drop the script-page and have both hands gripped round the director's neck, I feel primed to hop down to contracts and sign on the dotted.
Just for insurance, I practically rip out my vocal cords with a final MGM roar.
As free therapy, it's worth the train-fare alone.
'Well ... I don't quite know what to say. Nobody has done anything quite like that before.' The man's eyes are inspecting the floor, while his left hand massages his reddening neck.
I retrieve the fallen page, and relieve them of my de-roared self. Such is the willingness to delusion, that I seriously imagine my efforts will pay instant dividend. Although I have not physically attacked a director before, a small voice I don't want to acknowledge keeps flashing warning signals.
Going over every detail of the just happened, while looking at the suburbs flashing past, all conviction rallies forth to quell the doubt and convince me, despite my lack of pectoral dimension and/or respect for the director's person, that the Monster will, in minutes, be mine. I put in a call to my agent to confirm this.
'How did it go?' she enquires.
'Gave it my best shot, though must admit that maybe my torso wasn't quite what they were looking for. But I think the reading made some kind of impression.'
'Well, they're still seeing people, 'cos we have another client going in this afternoon, but I'll let you know if we hear anything. Otherwise, things all right with you?'
Best not to answer that one. Two hours, days, weeks go by and, not having heard a peep, I have to take this on board and get me down to the Rack, to oblivion among the faces photographed who are IT or about to be IT.
I sometimes find myself staring accusingly at the phone just sitting there, refusing to rally my talent to work.
Return from wherever and blink disbelief that the answerphone message light is not flashing. Could the little bulb have blown? Or am I truly losing it? Don't ask.
Why endure this humiliation? Get a job. Any job. Go back to Swaziland. We told you you'd never crack it. Who the hell do you think you are? Marlon Brando? Laurence Olivier? Face it. Even if the BBC film does finally see the light of day, don't think it's going to change anything. Grow up.
Meantime my pitying wife offers as much TLC as she can muster and I detect patronage in her tones when it isn't there, and feel guilty when she offers her unshakeable Faith. Where I have little or none.
One day my dormant laughter cells are temporarily rejuvenated by the Call to Panto that comes down the line. I find myself sitting on the floor and laughing till my ribs ache after the agent declares my eligibility, with encouragement, to audition for Little John in Robin Hood and the Babes in the Wood, because I am over six foot tall.
'Lots of money in panto. Everybody does it, specially round Christmas when everything else is shut down and nothing's cast. Oh, and could you take along a song sheet as they want to hear you sing.'
An arctic scout shed somewhere behind King's Cross Station for ten a.m. and a waiting area for the dispossessed. Or so they seem to me. Not much obvious eye-contact, but that hooded surveillance of the competition that charges the room with apprehension. I tot up the height variations to assess how many panto Little Johns are in the vicinity. One is belting out 'MARIAAAAAAA,' in the audition room, and two more are lined up in front of me. A compassionate face with floppy fringe pokes into the waiting room and whispers, 'Won't be long. Name, please?'
The competing Johns shuffle song sheets before going in and I wonder whether my choice of the Swaziland National Anthem is quite appropriate. Different, but maybe deadly.
'SOMEWHEEEEEEEERE!' And out shoots the first Little John.
'DONT CRY FOR ME ARGENTINAAAAAAGH!' The second challenger stamps off, clearly distressed by the off-key note of his finale.
'MEMORY-EEEEEEEEEEEE!' And number three is over and out.
My turn.
A long trestle table at the far end. Three judges, still scribbling opinions, and a pianist, who is the one friendly face. It feels like the first moments in a prison movie, when, standing on the white line, you give name and number, and hand over your worldly goods, only in this instance it's my paltry credits and last vestiges of self- confidence.
'Done panto before?' one spindle-featured face asks.
'No.'
'What are you going to sing for us, then?'
Feeling all of five, I confess to the anthem and detect instant curiosity in the upturned face which, a moment ago, was still scribbling notes on the 'Memory' man. Walk the distance to the piano, offer up the sheet and turn to face the six eyeballs that have the look of vultures awaiting a kill.
Open my mouth after the introductory bars and noiseless air is all that it emits.
'Relax, I'll give you the intro again. And a one two three ...'
Eyes clamped and face no doubt contorted into constipation expression, I hear a hyena-like caterwaul blast from my mouth. Dizzy with the over-supply of oxygen, I risk opening my eyes and barge through the ruptured anthem, looking into the middle distance, mortified. Blood pounding round my head, I retrieve the song sheet, nod to the pianist and steal towards the judgement table.
'Well, that's a first. For all of us. Who is your agent?'
Who fucking cares? My legs get me out of there and hurtling towards the underground pronto-presto. Sitting among the midmorning travellers, I rehash the full horror in slow motion.
I call my agent. 'I don't think you'll be hearing anything about Little John. Sorry about that, but maybe I'll take up singing lessons. No, I'm quite sure.'
David and Phillipa Conville, with whom I had worked at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre the previous year, have mentioned my name to Michael Whitehall, an agent they think might help me.
'Go smart!' is their advice.
I get smart and go to smart offices in St James's. Fish tanks and secretaries and phones going. I'm ushered in to see Mr Whitehall, but not before I've had a chance to view the photo board displaying the talent represented in eight-by-ten black and whites.
'Take a seat.'
Michael has a drawly sneery voice that seems to emanate from his sawn-off-shotgun nostrils. He is immaculately dressed in Pringle cardigan, flannels, pinstripe shirt and tie.
Friendly and funny-sarcastic, we size one another up across his desk. He sits in a high-back medieval throne with what look like turrets on each side of the back. My chair is functional and appropriate to my lowly status. Between him and me rests the jagged jaw of a shark.
'We were once attacked by one of those.'
'A shark?' He raises an eyebrow.
'In Africa, Mozambique coast.' What am I supposed to talk about?
He is very direct and says that while he is possibly interested, he 'obviously cannot do anything until I have seen your work'. I mention Honest, Decent and True, the BBC film to come, and a 'Thank you very much for giving me the time and yes, I will definitely keep in touch.'
'Edward Fox on the line for you, Michael. Can you take it?'
Into the street, which now seems momentarily paved with golden possibility.
This bounding euphoria lasts a couple of days. Everything is now fixed on Honest, Decent and True which still hasn't been given a new transmission date. Christmas is coming and the staff in W. H. Smith's seem to have become so accustomed to my lurking at the mag stand that I wonder if I've become invisible.
Watching TV induces a head-rant: who are all these people, acting and working and getting paid and pointing at weather charts, smiling through snowstorms on the Isle of Skye, and the second episode of We Are All Famous will continue after the News at Ten.
Lying in the middle of the floor and discerning the intricacies of the plaster rose in the middle of the ceiling has begun to seem a more sane option. Why not take up further education, boy? Why not read some more Tolstoy? Why not shut-the-fuck-up and die?!
Six interminable months drag by and then, 'Your picture's in the Radio Times,' Joan calls out as she arrives home from work one day. Fifty thousand volts up my Khyber would have been sedative to what these six words achieved. 'Where?'
'It's not big, but your name is under it and it's going out on Sunday the thirteenth of January at nine p.m.' I'm not superstitious but at this moment, I am daring fate to thwart me once again by quoting Macbeth, walking under ladders, and across the paths of black cats. Sunday the thirteenth, not Friday the thirteenth. Could this be a problem? Could this be the beginning of the end of being invisible?
In the cold porridge reality of Sunday morning, I anxiously scrutinize the Radio Times to see what the other TV channels have to offer at nine that evening. Honest, Decent and True is on BBC2 so surely that incredibly popular American- something-or-other or last of the red-hot pokers of Yorkshire will be the viewers' first and second choice. And those left over will doubtless be asleep in front of Gardener's World. So who will watch?
WATCH ME, MAMA. WATCH ME, DADA. OH, JEEZUS.
'Hello, this is Richard E. Grant, I met with Michael Whitehall about six months ago and he asked me to give him a call when my TV film was to be broadcast ... Put it in writing? Of course I will.'
Hollow-guts watching through the cracks in ten fingers strapped to my phizog. Christ, is that what I look like sound like walk like? Nuclear mushrooms cloud up my brain and the bile of embarrassment is coursing fast through my veins. Everyone else seems fine, but oi vey and a trio of poodles, what the ... WHAT ... am I doing?
Tears would be too easy an option right now. The temperature in the room seems to have burst the thermometer, or is it just that my head is about to implode?
'You're funny.' My wife's reaction is edged with a distinct note of surprise. It dawns on me, too, that I'm supposed to be funny. Maybe not the full ha-ha brand, but certainly satirical and sniggery.
'You're funny.'
This note of affirmation is like a benediction. You live with each other all year round, in a kind of close-up, and all of a mosey, tonight, watching, you are seen in Cinemascope. And if she is surprised by what is beaming back, then all is clearly Not Lost.
'YOU'RE FUNNY,' she repeats, and I suddenly, blindingly flash upon just what it must have been like living with me this past unemployed year, and wonder whether I would be as capable and generous in the reverse circumstance. Tears are streaming down my chops.
'You're all right. Don't be upset.'
'It's not the fucking TV. It's you. Where did they make you?'
'What are you on about?'
Lest I test this poor human's patience any further, I hug and hold and go for a brontosaurus smooch. That all this should originate from with the showing of something on BBC2 on a Sunday night I am sure must strike as ludicrous, but, oooooh, the RELIEF, the brass-bound silver-plated affirmation that, in the eyes of my beholder, I do have a chance, crack, shimmy up the old drain-pipe of future and fortune.
When the credits roll the phone starts to ring. Folks I thought had assumed me dead are yodelling and it feels as if I have come back to the land of the living.
Ten a.m. on Monday, it's 'Hello, Michael here. Come and have lunch.'
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "With Nails"
by .
Copyright © 1998 Richard E. Grant.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Copyright,
Acknowledgements,
Withnail and I,
Warlock,
Henry and June,
LA Stories,
Hudson Hawk,
More LA Stories,
The Player,
Dracula,
The Age of Innocence,
Pret à Porter,
Epilogue,
Afterword: Budget/No Budget,
What People are Saying About This
Hilarious and wonderful..you'll laugh, you'll cry, especially if you're in the book like I am.
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