The actor, 62, has been uploading clips of himself uttering lines from the cult 1987 film, much to the delight of fans. The British star has named the sketch ‘Withnail and I isolation quotes’.
Richard E Grant has been delighting fans of his most famous role, in cult 1987 film Withnail and I, by quoting famous lines from it on a daily basis to help relieve the boredom of lock-down.
It’s been 33 years since Grant starred as the title character, aspiring actor Withnail, in Bruce Robinson’s hit black comedy, but the love for it remains strong.
Introducing his pick of his favourite lines as the ‘Withnail and I isolation quote for today’, Grant, 62, is seen in the short videos on Twitter uttering lines such as ‘We’re not from London, you know’ and ‘Are you the farmer?’.
Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me?CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?
Directed by Marielle HellerCertificate 15☆☆☆☆
Melissa McCarthy and Richard e. Grant
LIKE a slimmer version of the great Uncle Monty, Richard E Grant sashays his way into this marvellous film with an unquenchable thirst for substances that make him feel skewwhiff, a vocabulary of gorgeously pronounced swear words (can anyone else give the f-word such depth and richness?), and a tragic backstory that feels so much like Richard Griffiths’ seminal outing in Withnail and I that it feels like Grant is paying homage to his co-star.Throw in a knockout performance by fellow lead Melissa McCarthy, and you could have had this these two characters doing absolutely nothing but sitting in a bar and I’d pay top dollar to watch it.
Richard E Grant has captivated the internet. The actor greeted the news of his nomination for an Academy Award by returning to his first rental when no one had heard of him. There he whooped with childlike delight, and then shared the whole thing in an utterly disarming Instagram post. He also phoned up his co-star and co-nominee Melissa McCarthy, and together they cried. Perhaps now Grant will finally be umbilically linked in the public mind to his performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me? (pictured below), for which he has been nominated as Best Supporting Actor, as well as his career-igniting turn in Withnail and I. Continue reading →
The much-loved Penrith tea room scene from Withnail & I (actually filmed at a chemists’ in Milton Keynes)
Unspecified cake it was, which for this publication is a rarity. “Just bring out the cakes.” “Cake, and fine wine.” The context was all. A couple of wastefully drunk and filthily arrogant unemployed actors bumbling into the Penrith Tea Rooms at closing time. And Richard E Grant’s unimprovably bonkers follow-up, somehow both slurred and royally, commandingly, articulate: “We want the finest wines available to humanity.”
It was 1986 and the filming of Withnail and I. Yet the writer and director Bruce Robinson, for whom this was pretty much autobiographical, was back in 1960s Camden. Railing as ever against an unestablishable establishment: and moving the setting to the Lake District effectively moved the decades. The distaste on the face of the proprietor, the fine character actor Llewellyn Rees, surely echoes the pursed lips of all who had dogged Robinson’s 60s days with twitching curtains and long noses when all he was trying to do was … have some fun.
Robinson is thankfully very much alive, as I found a few years ago. As are of course Grant and Paul McGann, the “I” of the film’s title. Rees died in 1994. But I managed to catch up with photographer Murray Close, who took this still. Did anyone, I ask, have an inkling of what a success, a cult, that film would become, with its timeless celebration of simple friendship and generational differences?
“Not at all. Bruce had to fund the last reel himself. We didn’t have a clue. It was a great script, of course, but everyone was an unknown – though I believe Bill Nighy read for the main part. But slowly, slowly, videos and then DVDs came out, and … yes, in hindsight, it’s a great film, but I just remember it as truly tremendous fun, with a UK crew of a certain age and propensity to laughter.”
Murray’s website has many more extraordinary outtakes. The “Penrith tea-rooms” location was in fact what is now a chemists’ shop in Stony Stratford, Milton Keynes. The last few lines of Robinson’s script, with Grant doing Hamlet by the London Zoo wolves, still enthral. “What a piece of work is a man … [yet] man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither.” [The wolves are unimpressed. Withnail exits into the rain.
The star has acknowledged the role of the film in his life.
Richard E Grant has revealed every acting job he secured in his career was the “direct result” of starring in cult classic Withnail And I.
He has said the film, revolving around an alcohol-fuelled trip to the Lake District, was the reason for him being cast in career roles since.
The Swazi-British actor portrayed the dishevelled and drunken thespian Withnail in the 1980s film, which has become a revered British comedy.
Speaking to The Big Issue, Grant has said he had ambitions to be a stage actor, and never dreamed that he would be a star of the big screen.
A chance change of agent resulted in a successful audition for the planned Withnail And I, a film he says has underpinned his entire career.
He said: “Almost without exception, every job I’ve had, is a direct result of being in this Withnail And I.”
The film made him part of a cult classic, playing an alcoholic acting hopeful. Grant’s own relationship with drink was fraught, being brought up in a household with an alcoholic father in Swaziland.
Vivian MacKerrell – the man whom WITHNAIL was based on.
Grant said that his early ambitions upon moving to England were to be in theatre, but a new agent steered him to the comic role that made his name.
He said: “I genuinely thought that my entire career would be in the theatre, and never thought I’d ever be in films.
“I got a new agent, Michael Whitehall, who introduced me to casting directors – one of whom, Mary Selway, auditioned me for Withnail And I, which completely changed my professional life.
“I am so indebted to writer-director Bruce Robinson for taking the chance on a complete unknown, and for the decades-long friendship that’s ensued. I am allergic to alcohol, so it’s ironic being identified for playing a drug-addled alcoholic.”
The actor, 62, has been uploading clips of himself uttering lines from the cult 1987 film, much to the delight of fans. The British star has named the sketch ‘Withnail and I isolation quotes’.
