The REG Temple is the official website for actor, author and director Richard E. Grant.
Richard has appeared in over 80 films and television programs, such as Withnail And I, The Scarlet Pinmpernel, Jack & Sarah, L.A. Story, Dracula, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Gosford Park & The Iron Lady. In 2005 he directed his first major release, Wah-Wah.
This website is unique in that it has been run and maintained by volunteers and fans since 1998. For more information on its origins, please click here.
Here’s a short video interview with Richard E Grant – whose playing Michael Heseltine in the new Margaret Thatcher biopic – where he admits that he hasn’t got the balls to be a stand-up.
Richard Bracewell, the writer and director of Cuckoo, describes his experiences of working with the legendary Withnail & I actor, Richard E Grant…
Few living actors are accorded the epithet “legend”. Even fewer deserve it. Richard E. Grant does both.
Spike Milligan joked that his tombstone epitaph would read, “Wrote Goon Show. Died”. Grant might once have feared the same, “Played Withnail. Died”.
But Grant didn’t let Withnail bury him. He rolled away the stone. With cut-glass accent and razor-sharp timing he’s carved a granite CV with the names of Coppola, Altman, Campion, Bracewell…
Hang on! Bracewell?
My second feature film, Cuckoo. I was directing Richard E. Grant from my own script. The weight of the granite CV suddenly felt very heavy around my neck. Whatever else happens – I reminded myself as he arrived for his first day on set – don’t ask for an autograph.
Bruce Robinson prepared Grant for the role of Withnail by getting him blind drunk on vodka. (Grant is a teetotaler.) Robinson believed the experience of actually being drunk would give his actor the sense memory to play at being drunk.
In Cuckoo, Richard’s character is Julius Greengrass, a cardiology professor who knows everything there is to know about the human heart, except how to form normal relationships. His character was cold, dark, and lonely.
Taking Bruce Robinson’s lead, I took Richard to somewhere cold, dark, and lonely. Local people know it as Great Yarmouth.
We built a laboratory where Richard’s character worked. The set was cold, dark, and lonely. I think Richard probably hated it, but he was kind enough not to tell me to my face; instead choosing local TV evening news as the best place to express his discomfort. Had he gone filming in Great Yarmouth by mistake?
Any lingering insecurity was dispelled the moment Richard walked on set to start work. It was electrifying. It was like Great Yarmouth illuminations coming on. He galvanised the other actors, he galvanised the crew. It wasn’t like having Richard E. Grant on set – it was having a great actor to work with. And, since I knew how to work with an actor, then on we got.
Withnail & I is endlessly quoted – it’s the language that pins you. No one else can quite reproduce the lazy-desperate cadances of “Finest wines available to humanity” or “Are you the farmer?”. Grant told me he took the role of Julius in Cuckoo because he wanted to speak the character’s florid dialogue. And the moment he started speaking, the character came to life.
It wasn’t Withnail on set, and only once in the film is there a flash of him, one fleeting look to conjour up all the accusation and despair Grant poured into the sozzled, eponymous anti-hero. For the rest of Cuckoo, he was Julius – a living, breathing, anti-Withnail, and about as dark as Grant has ever played.
I worked with a legend and didn’t want my money back. I’ll keep quoting Withnail, still rating it as the funniest and saddest film ever made. And meanwhile I’ll be trying to write more words for Richard E. Grant to speak.
Celebrities and news-makers are grilled by Matthew Stadlen in exactly five minutes with a whole array of different question relevant to their lives.
Actor Richard E Grant talks to Matthew Stadlen about Withnail & I, why he wears two watches, his obsession with smells and how he got his E.
According to the Liverpool Echo, a raunchy TV drama starring actor Richard E Grant and X-Files star Gillian Anderson will be shot in Liverpool.
The city’s Georgian Quarter is to be transformed into 1870s London for the BBC Victorian period drama, The Crimson Petal and The White.
Cast and crew working on the four-part adaptation of Michel Faber’s international best-selling novel will come to Liverpool in two weeks.
The Crimson Petal and The White, produced by Origin Productions, will tell the story of Sugar, a well-read prostitute who yearns for a better life having become trapped by the limitations of a woman’s role in Victorian society.
Things change for her, however, when she meets William Rackham, a wealthy man who falls for her charms and buys her out of the brothel.
Lynn Saunders, manager of Liverpool Film Office, said: “Liverpool’s Georgian Quarter is a huge favourite for film makers. “The style and almost perfect condition of the architecture, and the ease with which we can make a few quick changes to revert it back to its original look, makes it a very appealing location. We’ve hosted so many productions there now that residents and our partners make it easy for them to do their work with the minimum of fuss and hassle. And that welcoming, can-do reputation is a big factor when studios choose to film in Liverpool.”
Codename Kyril – The Complete Series is now available on DVD (Region 2 only) as a web exclusive at networkdvd.net
Codename Kyril – The Complete Series clip, Edward Woodward and Ian Charleson out 26th July 2010
Out 26th July 2010 as a web exclusive from http://www.networkdvd.net/: Codename Kyril DVD http://www.networkdvd.net/product_info.php?products_id=1180
Among an illustrious cast that includes Joss Ackland, Peter Vaughan, Richard E. Grant and Denholm Elliott, Edward Woodward (Callan) stars opposite Ian Charleson (Chariots of Fire) in a taut and skilfully plotted Cold War thriller.
Thought to be one of the last great made-for television spy series, produced as the Cold War era came to an end, Codename: Kyril offers complex characterisations and an intelligent treatment of the classic espionage theme of trust and betrayal. This compelling, evocative series is adapted by the award-winning John Hopkins – whose previous credits include Smiley’s People and Z Cars – and co-produced by Primetime Emmy winner Patrick Dromgoole (Robin of Sherwood). This release presents the complete two-part mini-series (usually only seen these days in a radically edited ‘TV movie’ form), originally screened in 1989.
The KGB has a particularly evasive spy to eliminate: a high-ranking Kremlin traitor who has been leaking crucial secrets to London. Bucharensky, code-name Kyril, is ordered to defect to catch the attention of the intelligence services of both East and West, setting himself up as a target and drawing fi re from all sides as he makes his way across Europe to London; the object of his mission is to panic the traitor into making a mistake. But waiting in London is Kyril’s deadliest enemy: Royston, a KGB mole whose life now depends upon silencing Kyril before he can disclose Royston’s identity as a Soviet double agent…
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