a combination of does this script appeal,

who are the other actors attached,

who is the director?

All of those things combined to make it seem

a viable project.

You have no way of knowing because

you have to take a gamble otherwise

every movie you made would be an instant hit

because we'd all known and you know nobody does that.

As William Gilbert the late screenwriter said,

"nobody knows anything."

[upbeat piano music]

My name is Richard E. Grant

and this is the timeline of my career.

What a piece of work is a man.

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,

how like an angel in apprehension,

how like a god of beauty of the world.

I had been unemployed for nine months

before I got this part, so playing somebody

who is bitter and twisted about being

an alcoholic, unemployable actor

was the best and unplanned life experience

that I could possibly have had.

I was 29 years old in the spring of 1986.

They had tried to get this movie

with an unpronounceable title "Withnail and I" cast.

Daniel Day Lewis had just come off

a double whammy of appearing in "Room With a View"

and "My Beautiful Launderette",

so he was offered absolutely everything

including the lead in "Withnail and I".

Massively he turned it down and the casting director

was then scraping around, I had never done a movie before

let alone an audition for one

and got called up by the late Mary Selway

the casting director, she cast me in it

that gave me the beginning of a film career

and the irony is that I am allergic to alcohol

as I discovered when I was a teenager

that I had blood tests and have no enzyme in my system,

so Bruce Robinson the writer/director,

he's a masochist of course and he insisted

that I had a chemical memory

and so he sent me home and I got paralytically drunk

on a bottle of champagne.

Throwing up, drinking, throwing up, drinking

until I eventually went to rehearsals the next morning

and then there was a moment where I knew

that I had to get out of the door

because I could feel a Persian carpet of vomit

coming up my throat, passed out outside

and then woke up in my own bed 24 hours later

having no memory of how I got there.

In the scene of the movie where these two characters

are just so desperate for any kind of alcohol

or substance he takes lighter fluid

and during the rehearsal it had been water

and Bruce Robinson replaced it

with very, very strong vinegar,

so when this went down my throat I choked

and then vomited all over Paul McGann's shoes

out of site of the camera.

Paul McGann had a big television series.

He was very self-confident and I'm 6'2"

and he said, "you know, you're never ever

"gonna make it in the movies because

"everybody is height impaired like Tom Cruise"

and I said, "well, Clint Eastwood's over 6'2"

"and there are people that are over 6'2."

He said, "Nah, you haven't a chance."

[laughing]

He was you know funny and mocking,

but I was convinced that I would never work again

and ironically playing that out of work,

alcoholic, drug-addicted actor

has lead to every single job almost without exception

that I've had in the movie industry ever since.

Would not Satan have saved you,

were he thus inclined?

- Perhaps he'll save us both, Redferne.

- Withnail had opened in America

before it did in England and a director

called Steve Miner and the late great producer,

Arnold Kopelson who had just won an Oscar

came to London because they were doing this

historical horror movie called "Warlock",

set between the 18th century and the 20th century

and they wanted Sean Connery, he turned it down,

they then went to Michael Douglas, he turned it down

and then they'd seen Withnail

and thought well we'll get a skinny English guy

who's gonna cost us nothing, he'll do a Scottish accent

because we originally wanted Sean Connery.

So I went to L.A. and the first job I did there

was this horror movie that had this tagline,

"He came from the past to destroy the future."

All I know to say, oh you know Hollywood

and write it off as a superficial place

of no consequence, but I absolutely loved it.

I'd been a film buff because I grew up in Swaziland,

which was a British protectorate in Southeast Africa.

There was no television where I grew up

at all until I had left.

Movies and the radio were the two outlets

into the world beyond.

The idea that I would ever be in a movie,

let alone work in Hollywood was so unlikely

that I was just gobsmacked to be there.

Hi. - Hi.

- I loved your wacky TV bit.

- Thanks, I loved your too.

- But I didn't...

- You know I can explain it's a very simple thing...

- Oh, I see.

- See it's a thing that I do regularly...

- That's marvelously funny.

You have a lot of verve.

- Verve?

- I had done a second film with Bruce Robinson

called "How to Get Ahead in Advertising"

and at the premiere of that I met Steve Martin

and he said, "Would you be in my next movie?"

and I thought yeah, pigs might fly.

A month later true to his word

I got the script of "L.A. Story"

and was flown out to L.A., so that was my second job there

and I had been warned that Steve

was very difficult to get to know,

there would be no small talk whatsoever.

So I was staying at the Chateau Marmont

and I got a phone call, "Hey, it's Steve."

I said, "Steve who?"

He said, "Steve Martin."

"Do you want to come over for brunch?"

I said, "Okay."

And he opened the door and he was very friendly

and he said, "Would you like a drink?

What do you want to eat?"

I meet his wife Victoria Tennant

who I was playing the husband of in the story

and I thought I'd be there for half an hour,

10 minutes I had no idea, stayed the whole day.

So he was the complete opposite

of what I had been told he would be like.

We've become from that age onwards great friends

and we used to communicate at the end of the last century

by fax on a weekly basis.

So he's got apparently sort of box of faxes that thick.

There's a book that we have written between us

of this 30 year friendship.

I've got all the emails.

He's kept all the faxes.

He could have me in court really

or other people could have me in court

because they are unvarnished in which

nothing is censored and no prisoners are taken.

So there was this scene inside the L.A. Museum,

Steve was on roller skates, he's such a physical comedian

when he puts his mind to it he just has

this obsessive determination to get something right

and it was an amazing privilege

to be able to film in that museum

without anybody else around,

so that's all I remember from that day

and the fact that all the fashions

were high-waisted, pleated pants

I don't think will ever come back into fashion.

She's dead.

I'll tell you there's not a dry eye in the house.

- She's dead?

- She's dead.

This is a tough story, a tragedy

in which an innocent woman dies.

Why?

Because that happens.

I was in an absolute disastrous movie "Hudson Hawk"

starring Bruce Willis doing this

James Bond-like spoof or that was the intention of it.

At the premiere as I sat down

there was a tap on my shoulder,

"Hey, E. Grant."

Robert Altman.

And he said," I've got a part for you

"in a movie called "The Player",

"which I'm starting shooting in a months time.

"Are you available?"

And I said Bob, what you're about to see "Hudson Hawk"

is so diabolical that I will never ever

be able to work in L.A. or the movie industry ever again.

He said, "Ah, no."

When I got this career resurrection

to finally work with Bob Altman

was an amazing, life reaffirming thing

because he absolutely loved actors.

He liked actors with very long faces,

who were very thin and didn't cost a lot of money.

I had seen "Nashville" when I was a theater student 27 times

in a movie house, so I was a complete Altman obsessive,

so when I got the opportunity to work with him once

and then subsequently got to be

in three of his other movies was the real fulfillment

of a teenage movie buffs dream.

I miss him and his wife Kathryn

more than anybody that I've ever worked with

in show business because he would invite

all the crew and all the actors to watch the dailies

every evening, everyone was offered a joint

or a drink, you really felt that you were part

of an experience of a movie being made

rather than the piecemeal in which movies are made

where people are so isolated.

I've been in movies where I haven't even met

other actors who were in the movie

because your scenes don't cross over until the premiere.

From an actors point of view if you're a social person

like I am it was really the ideal.

The fact that "The Player" completely

resurrected Altman's career was an amazingly touching,

warm-hearted moment, so I was honored to be in it.

Really here at the opera like that sitting her

next to May Welland, it's all very odd.

- Well, she's had such an odd life.

- Will he even bring her to the Beaufort's Ball

you suppose?

- [Older Man With Glasses] If they do

the talk will be of little else.

- During "The Player" one of the producers

threw a party at which everybody in the room

was Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, Barbara Streisand,

Ellen Barkin, Winona Ryder who was 19.

She came up to me and blew fan smoke

because she was still living with Johnny Depp

at that time and she said, "Johnny Depp

"and I know every single line of Withnail"

and she started quoting it at me.

Winona said to me, "You have to be in Dracula,

"which I'm doing."

And I said well who's directing it?

And she said, "Coppola".

I said, well what power do you have?

She said, "No, I'm the one that's

"got the thing financed."

Through Winona, I got to be in Dracula

and once I was in Dracula I then

got cast straight after that again

I think because of agent Winona

in Martin Scorsese's "Age of Innocence"

playing a small part, but when I meet Daniel Day Lewis

on the first morning I did prostrate myself

and I said, "Oh Daniel, thank you

"for giving me my career break by turning down

"'Withnail and I' four years previously"

and he said, "Arise my son."