Born Richard Grant Esterhuysen in Swaziland – now Eswatini – Richard E Grant is seen by many as among the most English of English actors.
From his impactful debut as the eponymous antagonist in the dark comedy Withnail and I (1987) to parts in the Star Wars, Game Of Thrones and A Series Of Unfortunate Events franchises, he has lived the career he dreamt of as a child.
His late wife Joan Washington died in 2021 following a battle with lung cancer. But she wasn’t the first member of his family to die from the disease.
As he appears on the panel of The Masked Singer tonight, here’s a round up of some of the key events that have shaped Richard E Grant over the years…
Richard E Grant met late wife Joan Washington in 1983
A year after moving to London with dreams of being an actor, Richard E Grant met the woman who would become his wife of 38 years.
His emigration came a year after his father’s death from lung cancer, a disease with which he would later become intimately familiar.
Born Joan Geddie in 1946, Washington moved from her hometown of Aberdeen, Scotland, to London at the age of 18. She graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama and started working as a speech teacher at a reform school for girls.
She married Keith Washington in 1969. They had a son, Tom, together. She took his name. Then, following their divorce, and while working as a dialect coach at the Actors Center, she met Richard. That was January 1983.
Joan Washington and Richard E Grant married three years later and had two children together, Tiffany and Olivia. However, Tiffany lived for just half an hour, stillborn following a complicated pregnancy.
Richard writes “sparsely but heartbreakingly” about the fate of their firstborn daughter in his memoir, A Pocketful of Happiness.
Olivia, their second child, was born via C-section, weighing just four pounds. Richard once said he’s glad he has a daughter because his wife made a better role model than him.
On his wife’s final challenge to him
Joan Washington was diagnosed with stage four terminal lung cancer in 2020. On September 2, 2021, she died at the age of 74.
From the moment of her diagnosis, Richard said he was “determined to make the very best of the time that we had left together”, he told Thought Economics in 2023.
Doctors told them she’d live 12 to 18 months. She took a “new American drug,” he said, which was supposed to keep her alive for longer.
It “stopped working after three months,” which, however sad, left them with enough time to “say everything we wanted to, to one another”.
Four days before she died, she challenged Richard and Olivia – their daughter – to find a pocketful of happiness in each day. He describes it as a mantra by which he has navigated the “abyss of grief”.
Richard E Grant believes secrets are toxic
The best way to deal with death, he has said, is to be “transparent and open” about it. Why? Because “secrets are toxic”.
When asked by The Guardian about how Joan might feel about his book, Richard replied that he didn’t know.
“But I absolutely 100% believe that secrets are toxic, and I’ve seen so many people turned upside down because of some family secret, and she knew that about me.”
Since her passing, some of his friends have started trying to fix him up with what The Guardian describes as “eligible women”, but he finds it “absolutely bizarre”.
“It’s not something I could even conceive of at this point. It’s still too raw and present, and I am still having an ongoing conversation with my wife in my head.”
Talking about her with his friends keeps her spirit alive, he added. And, after 38 years together, he knows what her reaction would have been to “anything I’m experiencing without her”.
The Masked Singer is on ITV1 tonight (February 8) at 7pm.
Read more: Richard E Grant on why he refused to honour his late wife’s dying wish
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Richard has suffered two tragic losses to lung cancer in his family
The post Inside Richard E Grant’s family heartache – from ‘abyss of grief’ following wife’s death to ‘heartbreaking’ loss of baby girl appeared first on Entertainment Daily. Entertainment DailyRead More