Richard E. Grant

13:30Richard E. Grant:bring him in here we'll do it

13:33Bella Freud:I think he's mildly amused but he's also a bit sort of disgusted by this sort of reverting to always that and you know I I know I'm really judgmental and he isn't in that way. He's very discriminating. He notices everything. Yeah. But he just doesn't seem to get the glee. I think some people do it more than others. There's something when he said he didn't really enjoy that, I noticed I couldn't really get a laugh after a while. But when he does make a comment about something, it's really weighty, you know, his very small, critical sort of noticing. It's much more potent than my relentless stream of...

14:36Bella Freud:Piffle. Yeah, exactly. Because your writing about people's appearances is very evocative and you described the director, Stephen Poliakoff, as wearing a collapsed tweed jacket and fucked corduroy pants and someone as having a crisis of beauty, which is so specific. And I wondered how important language is to you.

15:03Richard E. Grant:uh god you've made my wince at the thought of someday taking umbrage um very good i because i grew up in a country that didn't have television so books and the bbc world service on the wireless as we then called it they were the way out or the one movie house that we had on cinema that was the way into being the world beyond the tiny country that i grew up in southeast africa called swaziland so reading has been a lifelong i read about four books a week and i've got piles next to my bend you know flip between whatever mood i'm in or what has grabbed my attention more than something else so language has been and words have been you know i realize incredibly helpful and important for me and the other thing is that if you're born as skinny as i was i was called rib cage when i was at drama school because when i was in my leotard for movement you could count all my ribs so i was called rib cage and um um so always being skinny words were the way that you could fight back um if you didn't have the muscle power which i've never had so giving somebody a put down in words and then being able to run fast with that combination was my sort of fight or flight mode so words have been and i'm astonished when when people i've been into some people's you know where they live and they don't have a single book and it's it's i find that really weird yeah have you ever come across that

16:59Bella Freud:yeah i did know someone who didn't have any books and it really hurt you know because an intelligent person but it seems to have not crossed their mind to to read anything um such a blissful way to pass time yeah because you've been you've talked about being attracted to addicts and your your father and with nell and i direct to bruce robinson both addicts and it seems like you had the good fortune to meet your wife joan washington who counterbalanced your traits as the child of an addict. And I remember reading the first time you tried to withhold and sulk, she called you out in this major way.

17:47Bella Freud:And was that a relief? It was astonishing because my mother was an Olympic sulker.

17:56Richard E. Grant:And for the last nine months of her marriage to my father in 1967, she didn't talk to him. So she'd say, pass your father the salt and flick this salt cellar across the dining room table. Ask your father for the car keys. It was a kind of passive aggressive, you end up being the piggy in the middle as a child. And I learned how powerful it was if you salt and withheld. so you know of course i didn't have any self-awareness about that but when i sulked for the first time when i was with joan uh she called me up on it she said are you sulking i mean she said if you are you better snap out of that very very quickly because i won't stand for it it was the first time anybody had actually just you know trip switched me on that and her daughter still says oh you think that you don't suck at all but she said yeah you still do in your way but not in the same way of just shutting down and not speaking to somebody for a long time um so she called me out on that and it was so hilarious that she said you're never to do that with me again.

19:24Bella Freud:It's so brilliant. It was so striking because, you know, growing up the way you did with these two very dysfunctional people and to have this miracle of somebody who absolutely stopped you from going down this rabbit hole, which is such torture being the sulker and the withholder as well. Have you sulked? Yeah. I mean, that was my strategy. Again, like being skinny, words and withholding felt powerful, but always are alienating. And the drinking, the poison chalice and everything, the behaviors that you get left with from being in that milieu something to kind of regulate your feelings. Yeah. And it's so self-destructive.

20:19Bella Freud:So when I read that, I thought, how God put this woman on earth for you to have this wonderful kind of escape route from what could have been waiting for you. It made a big impression. And she also described you as an erotic hot water bottle. It's a pretty good compliment. And did you know that's what you were capable of being before you got together with her?

20:52Richard E. Grant:No, because I had, God almighty, you have. I'm sure you can see how deeply I've blushed at this. That's brilliant. I'm going to stay here for the next 70 years. Um, no, she, because I thought that, because my parents' divorce was so bitterly acrimonious, um, I, you know, I, from the age of 10, I thought, I'm never going to fall in love. I'm never going to get married. I'm certainly never going to have a child. And then, of course, when I was 27, all of that got flipped because I did fall in love for the first time. I thought I'd been in love before, but I'd never fallen in love in the way that I did with Joan.

21:44So that was so revelatory that I suppose, as I'm sure you know from falling in love,

21:53Richard E. Grant:you feel like you're being seen for the first time completely and utterly in the most transparent way. and that no matter what your faults or foibles are, you're being invisibly held by that love. So that was life-changing and saved my life, really. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.

22:31Bella Freud:I am officially running for president of the United States.

22:35Richard E. Grant:It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war.

23:17Richard E. Grant:I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

23:22Bella Freud:because just before you got the lead in with nail and i you were seriously considering an advert saying wanted boy dancers in dubai no experience necessary and bruce robinson envisioned with nail as a character whose background was aristocratic but whose life was deeply rooted in rejecting the establishment through his clothes and did those clothes influence how you went on to dress

23:55Bella Freud:uh such good that long coat wearing that long coat with nothing underneath when you're covered in all that weird cream deep heat god it reminded me so much of someone i used to know

24:07Richard E. Grant:who is dead of course yes uh you know because it was set in 1969 and the clothes that i wore were designed by the costume designer andrew gayler um i didn't then buy a whole bunch of edwardian coats to wear in real life so but i have because i'm very tall and because i have got coats inevitably there's you know some at one point somebody said to me oh are you wearing the coat from and I said no it just happens to the same silhouette applies no I don't I don't think it has not to my conscious knowledge influenced the way I dress

25:02Bella Freud:because I saw with now when it first came out, and it seemed completely normal to me to be like that. You said, never before or since have I read something that conveys what is going on in my head so accurately. And how do you deal with extreme feeling? Because you don't drink or take drugs, and you obviously feel things deeply.

25:30Richard E. Grant:How do I answer that? I don't know I think that because you know what you pointed out earlier that because my father's an addict I've been attracted and enjoy the company of addicts because there is a in my experience of them there's a sort of heightened everything about them yeah do you understand what I'm saying

26:00Bella Freud:They're the best people.

26:01Richard E. Grant:Yeah. So it's very charismatic and addictive to be around people who are addicts.

26:07Bella Freud:Yeah.

26:07Richard E. Grant:So I can remember I was on during the rehearsals of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula in 1991, the Napa Valley, staying on his estate. And Anthony Hopkins said to me, you're one, aren't you? And I said, what? And he took me aside and he said, you're an addict. and I said no I'm not he said well you have a personality of a dry drunk white knuckling and I said wow and I said no I'm physically allergic to alcohol I find out when I'm 16 I had a blood test no enzyme in my blood and he said well your personality is of somebody who is so yeah Yeah. Have I answered your question?

27:00Bella Freud:That's so interesting. He felt the affinity with you. But then, of course, people can be addicted to people and certain behaviors. And certainly from what you described, being the child of an alcoholic, it sort of sets you up with a certain, as you described, a kind of fight, flight, and freeze that's very particular.

27:25Richard E. Grant:Yeah. And the element of, I suppose, fight and flight, fight or flight, is that there is always danger in the air. Yeah, yeah. And when you're with an addict and you're eggshelling along, never knowing what could suddenly, that thing is, in its own way, is very addictive. because when I had psychoanalysis when I was 42, I felt like I had a nervous breakdown. This analyst, absolutely brilliant man, Christopher Bolas, said to me, do you realize that you are kind of addicted to drama in any situation? You will seek it out or just instinctively be drawn to stuff where whereas the calm placid you know mojave desert of it all is of no real interest to you and i thought well that's absolutely right guilty as charged so i'm in the right profession for it

28:31Bella Freud:yeah because what you were saying about the low self-esteem and big ego of of actors is such a characteristic of addicts as well.

28:44Richard E. Grant:Absolutely. Bullseye.

28:45Bella Freud:Yeah. God, it's so interesting. And I just was constantly struck with reading, when I was reading A Pocket Full of Happiness, how you, these things that are normally destructive kind of electrical faults between people, how you and Joan seemed to compliment each other. And when you described saying, if you sleep with someone else, I'll kill you, I thought it was just so adorable. So you managed to keep this incredible charge with a trust, which is very, very unusual. and you had this famously happy marriage for 38 years until your wife tragically died of cancer. And you describe painting Joan's nails when she's ill in bed and I was so touched by that.

29:55Bella Freud:And you were like a girlfriend as well as a husband. Keisha.

29:59Richard E. Grant:Keisha Grant, I was. That's what she called me.

30:03Bella Freud:Oh, that's so, so lovely. Where did you learn to paint nails?

30:08Richard E. Grant:Well, I paint anyway. So I painted all my life. So painting nails or painting rooms, you know, it's just a smaller version. And it is such, I realize that it's such an intimate thing to do for somebody.

30:29Richard E. Grant:and when you both know that one of you is dying that doing a home spa version of just manicuring and looking after somebody makes them feel so much better and their self-esteem is enhanced and you're not going out, nobody's going to see these nails or how your hair's been blow dried or whatever But I saw the effect was so much larger than the small act of doing it, of her pleasure in that, that it became something that I did regularly with her.

31:17Bella Freud:Yes, so inspired because, of course, you could have called someone to come over. Oh, I don't think so.

31:24Richard E. Grant:You know, by the time in the last few months of her life, she didn't want to see people because she had so many steroids because of her lung cancer had had subsidiaries that went to her brain. And in order to control the brain tumors, she was given steroids, which made her face puff up. And so she didn't want to see people, understandably. whereas her nails and her hands and her hair, they stayed the same. So in focusing on those, you could somehow bypass what is happening to her face-wise.

32:10Bella Freud:Then there's a lot of questions about with now because there's so much source in there and it was so evocative of that time in similar ages.

32:23Richard E. Grant:No, you're younger than me.

32:24Bella Freud:A tiny bit. But for the with-nail physique, you were requested to lose a stone. And is there any psychological support provided for actors who have to lose or gain weight? Because it's pretty challenging. It's much more so, I'd imagine, than even an intimacy scene. It's such a drastic change of your identity.

32:51Richard E. Grant:The thing is, what happened, I'd been unemployed for nine months in 1985, and I'd read in a magazine, because I spent all my time in W.O. Smith looking freely through the magazines, and I read that if you're 6 '2 and you weigh this amount, you should weigh 12 stone and have more muscles or whatever. So I went to Andreas Reyniker, who had this body studio in Notting Hill Gate, and he transformed Christophe Lambert into Tarzan. So he took me on. And over 10 months, I managed with weight gain powder and doing this training to actually be 12 stone. And I still look skinny. So Bruce Robinson said to me when he gave me the part, he said, well, you're too fat.

33:43Richard E. Grant:You've got to lose a stone in weight. So I went, I called Gary Oldman, who I'd done this improvised film for the BBC, called Honesties and True. And I said, how did you lose your weight for playing Sid Vicious? And he told me that he lived on tuna fish and melons. But then I think he almost got hospitalized or did get hospitalized. at some point so i went back to boots got weight weight loss powder and was on these milkshakes for 10 days and lost a stone and a half pre-ozempic so that was yeah that that's what happened but there was no there was nobody that you know gave a tinkers about that said you know you should have some psychological assessment about what you've done to yourself but is there not that now because I think there is now.

34:38Bella Freud:Yeah.

34:39Richard E. Grant:Yeah. I know that Christian Bale has gained and lost weight, I think, almost more than any other actor that I can think of. So I don't know whether, I only worked with him once on Portrait of a Lady in 1995. Oh, yeah. I didn't ask him at that point. He's very shy about his weight gain and loss issues.

34:59Bella Freud:Because it is very destabilizing. So I was curious about that. But you have this ability to bring an anarchic, outlandish humor to many of your roles, like The Father in Saltburn. And it's always exciting to see what hilariousness you're going to bring to a sort of normal situation. And in your very first TV drama, when you were watching it with Joan, she says, oh, you're funny. and I wondered if that's when you realized you were funny. I think it was before Withnell, wasn't it?

35:44Richard E. Grant:I hadn't. You know from school if people think you're funny or not or you're popular or you're not. So the very small group of people, they got my humor And I suppose because it's what we talked about with my father and being an addict and all of that, it is not polite funny. I've heard stuff. It's fairly acidic. So, yeah, when she saw me in something and identified as, oh, you're funny, that I was more surprised that she had only just sort of clocked that.

36:30Bella Freud:Oh, right. That makes sense. Yeah, it does. It does. I suppose, do you think there's a difference between being funny and then being able to act funny? I mean, obviously you're incredibly talented, but it's a real thing, the way you play it straight,

36:52Richard E. Grant:and it's so derangingly funny. Yeah, but that's the key, because Bruce Robinson said during the rehearsals, the 10 days of rehearsals we had for Withnail, he said, the moment you and Paul McGann play this and telegraph that you think it's funny or that you know it's funny, it's dead in the water. So he said, you've got to play the reality of these characters' situations. They don't see any humor at all in what situation that they're in. so you have to play it dead straight and then it's funny so that was a great lesson really

37:32Bella Freud:so i owe him that also you have this expression on your face which is it reminds reminded me of children under 10 this this utter outrage and demand it's so charming and adorable and the whole combination is just totally...

37:56Richard E. Grant:I'm laughing because I'm obsessed with Traitors. Have you seen it?

38:02Bella Freud:I haven't seen it. You haven't? I want to see it. Okay, you're the one person in this entire

38:07Richard E. Grant:country that hasn't seen it. I know, I know.

38:08Bella Freud:And Claudia Winkleman sometimes wears my clothes on it. And when she does, they fly out of the shop. And so I'm hugely grateful and love Traitors, but I haven't seen it.

38:20Richard E. Grant:Well, the point about traitors.

38:22Bella Freud:Have you been on it?

38:23Richard E. Grant:No.

38:23Bella Freud:Oh. But I told her,

38:28Richard E. Grant:after you watched the current series, she said, you could never go on traitors because you'd be thrown out or killed or banished after the first day. I said, why? Because I love traitors. She said, because you are incapable of hiding what you feel about somebody or something on your face for more than half a second. So you would be just exposed and out instantaneously. That's so funny. That reminds me of what you just talked about, this thing of the outrage of a child on your face.

39:03Bella Freud:It's very endearing. It's so good. Because you talked about this crisis at 42, and you mentioned that the psychoanalyst said that you needed to reconnect with your mother. And you said, you described having this realization that all secrets are toxic and deciding to focus on honesty, which is quite a delicate line to tread, honesty. I mean, it's supposed to be so good, but it can go wrong when it's not really honest. You know, when it's telling someone. But I wondered how it affected your other relationships.

39:50Richard E. Grant:I think that you've, what I mean by that is that because having grown up in a household where everything had to be under lock and chain secrets, my mother's adultery, my father's alcoholism, so I have been, I've gone the opposite extreme because I find it very difficult to be medium and calm and Jimmy-like about things like your son. It's either black or white, all or nothing. And that's all my school reports. So I am absolutely the conviction that if you are transparent about everything and honest, that becomes in itself your armor.

40:41Bella Freud:Yeah. because if a tabloid newspaper is going to come

40:47Richard E. Grant:and turn your life upside down, if you've already owned what it is or been open about stuff, then what is there to go on? They can't come and knock on your door and say, oh, yeah, your father said this or your wife did that or whatever, or you did this.

41:09Richard E. Grant:but in terms of how delicate you're absolutely right about you try and live as honest I try and live as honestly as possible but you have to be considerate about you know the failings of other people and not if you're being judgmental about it yeah you can't tell them straight out how bad You can't say to somebody, your breath is like an open grave. You've got to give them, you know, tree ball mints in advance or say, have you been to the dentist lately? Or you've got to find a way to do it. But I feel compelled, like George Washington, you know, I cannot tell a lie.

41:55Bella Freud:But do you think you can ever tell anyone they have bad breath? You've singled out the one thing that's maybe no one can really do anything about it. Yes, you can.

42:05Richard E. Grant:Yes, you can. Because I found out from every, if I've ever met a dentist or my own dentist, I've said, is it, how proportional is it of bad guts? And they said 99 % of it is, you know, lazy oral hygiene. So you can fix it. floss, brush, whatever it is but don't be a manky old box of maggots

42:38Bella Freud:open graved mouth if you ever kissed somebody and you thought yeah once it happened it was the most shocking thing certainly gets you out of the room as fast as possible

42:57Richard E. Grant:it unites a cast very quickly if somebody goes oh my goodness that person has got breath breath on them it's hilarious as well chilling

43:11Bella Freud:because your mother she she apologized to you on her deathbed which is amazing unheard of what an extraordinary I disagree with you

43:28Richard E. Grant:I don't think it is unheard of because I think that when, this is what Christoph Bolas, the psychoanalyst, said to me. He said that after the age of 70, where you know that you've got far less future ahead of you than you have past behind, that the ghosts, unless you're a psychopath, and the demons of your misdemeanors in your life come to squat on you and you want to make good. You want to repair or be forgiven all. whatever it is, make reparation. So the fact that my mother, you know, I was able to talk about having witnessed this stuff in the backseat of the car, which she didn't know about, I think it was a great relief for her.

44:17Richard E. Grant:And it led to a, you know, rapprochement with her, which I was very grateful for.

44:21Bella Freud:Yeah. What a wonderful thing to happen. Yeah. Changes everything. Sort of changes the past as well as the future. Changes the past. change the power dynamic in your relationship and you know forgiveness is an incredibly powerful um self yeah that you know fixes the punctured tire it really does and it in an abstract way it doesn't make any sense but then when it happens it has a this complete neural change in your system.

44:56Richard E. Grant:It's the closest feeling that I've had to, when people talk about a religious conversion or a religious moment, epiphany. Mine was that when my mother said three magic words to me, please forgive me, which I never ever thought that I would hear from her.

45:17Bella Freud:How marvelous. It was revelatory. Yeah, really something. Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. and going back to your mad crush on barbara streisand your whole life yeah and you wrote her when you were 14 is that right yes and invited her to stay in swaziland and then when you finally met you got on incredibly well and what is it about her that you found

46:10Richard E. Grant:find so attractive well i think she's incredibly beautiful she has amazing colored eyes beautiful hands um voice of an angel and she has so many contradictions in the planes of her face uh and has an astonishing talent so the combination of all those things and i first saw her in funny girl when i was 12 years old and she was playing this part of a woman who was you know trying to make it in show business based on the life of fanny brice and so all that aspiration of trying to trying to make it was so and that yearning was so embedded in her you know amazing performance so that chimed and then when i was a teenager i saw her in whatsapp doc in which she had long blonde hair and you know tight tank top and bell-bottom jeans and i was in the middle of my hormonal storm you know adolescence so i just thought well this is it marry me now um and that you know you're supposed to get over these adolescent crushes once you hit your 20s and i said to christopher molus the psychoanalyst i said am i emotionally arrested as a teenager that i have not been able to he said no as long as it's not hurting anybody that's absolutely fine but he said yes probably is a form of arrested development in some way but um my daughter said to me last night She said, well, you waver from being about five and about 17 and not much older than that.

48:09Richard E. Grant:I said, yeah, but I'm a year and a half off 70. And she said, well, yeah, biologically. But she said emotionally, you are still there. I'm always amazed when people don't have crushes on somebody or manage to get over them. Say, oh, yeah, I used to have a crush on so-and-so, but mine is ongoing. And Joan said to me, I think just a month before she died, she said, well, you know, after I'm gone, if Barbra Streisand becomes available, would you make yourself known? And I said, what do you think, my darling? So, you know, that hasn't changed.

48:47Bella Freud:Yeah.

48:48Richard E. Grant:It hasn't changed.

48:49Bella Freud:It's nice that you're so constant in your affections. I mean, that seems a wonderful quality. True North Star. Yeah.

48:57Richard E. Grant:Yeah.

48:58Bella Freud:that's great it's so much fun having a crush anyway so yes because it's it the the beauty of

49:06Richard E. Grant:it is that it's unrequited and it's one way so there's no um there's no equivocation or anything about it you know if somebody says well you know i've heard of this about her you know this person is better looking or that person's you know more talented or whatever it's just think yeah move on like when when uh that brilliant moment in bridesmaids where she walks out of the shop and they've all got chronic diarrhea she's in a wedding dress she just slumps down into the middle of the road she just goes yeah drive on drive past that's what I feel when people denigrate anything about my obsession with Babs.

49:55Bella Freud:It's a marvelous thing. Move on, I don't care. It's a great resource in a way because I suppose if you feel a bit down, you can think about Babs, you know, and it's a kind of…

50:03Richard E. Grant:Not only think about, listen to her. Yeah. You know, put it on, headphones, in my car.

50:09Bella Freud:I suppose…

50:09Richard E. Grant:24-hour access.

50:11Bella Freud:Yeah, music.

50:12Richard E. Grant:Which you never have in real life with the person that you are actually in love with. You know, you don't have that.

50:18Bella Freud:No, it's true. It's a very good point.

50:22Richard E. Grant:Obsession on tap.

50:23Bella Freud:Yes. Because also you said that you'd love to work with Quentin Tarantino if you had the chance. And I wondered why he was the chosen one. Tarantino because, well, first and foremost, he's a writer. So his use of language and then his combination of the music

50:46Richard E. Grant:that he chooses in his films is so particular and unique to him that I thought, yeah, if I could have a chance, but I think he's only making one more film.

51:02Bella Freud:There's still one more film.

51:03Richard E. Grant:But to live your life in a dream of thinking, well, I haven't been to Epidorus yet, or I haven't been to Quentin Tarantino, knowing that it'll never happen, That in itself is like, you know, carrot in front of the old donkey. I like having those things.

51:19Bella Freud:What's your favorite of his films?

51:23Richard E. Grant:Do you like him?

51:25Bella Freud:Yeah, I like Reservoir Dogs still more than anything. More than the others?

51:29Richard E. Grant:Yeah. Well, I've watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood nine times.

51:33Bella Freud:Oh, my God. Because his Leonardo DiCaprio and the writing of that character

51:40Richard E. Grant:of what an actor goes through and what they feel and this imposter syndrome is so touching and hilarious at the same time that I never tire of that. Django Unchained, Inglourious Bastards, you know, the lot. I'm pretty deeply in that.

52:02Bella Freud:Yeah. God, well, I hope you're in the last one. I'm definitely not rushed to see it. I'm not. Is it cast? Yeah. Oh, God.

52:14Richard E. Grant:And I met him and I told him. I said, I've seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood six times. And he went, yeah, yeah. But every actor does that, you know. Whores.

52:23Bella Freud:You have to.

52:24Richard E. Grant:Whores to the cause. And you walked for Burberry last year and appeared in their campaign

52:32Bella Freud:with Naomi Campbell. And you said, I was astonished to be asked at my age. Yes. But you seem a natural for that. I can't believe you haven't done it because you seem to have always had an association with fashion, even if that's the feeling. You seem somehow connected to it. And I remember seeing you at Vivian Westwood's funeral as well.

52:58Richard E. Grant:Oh, I loved her.

52:59Bella Freud:I know. How did you know Vivian?

53:01Richard E. Grant:Well, because Robert Altman cast me in Praterporte, which turned out to be a disaster in 1994, and I was playing the male fashion designer, and all her collection of that year were what my character in the story was supposed to have designed. So I spent hours and hours with her talking and getting her tape recorded, everything about her life. And then she gave me this tiny tricorn hat with a veil, which I then wore to her memorial service, which is what you're talking about. Yes. And I saw her subsequently a few times. And she was so, again, singular.

53:49Bella Freud:God, yeah.

53:50Richard E. Grant:And decisive about everything. And her opinions were so, you know, there was no sort of Mount Rushmore granite about them. so that was that was my connection to fashion at that point and what was it like walking in the show because it's quite a thing isn't it well what's amazing about being in the show is I asked I walked in the Burberry show and then Mucci Prada asked me to walk in her Miu Miu show two months ago and wearing a leather apron and clothes from work workman's clothes from the 1950s so you don't have to learn any lines you don't have to you wear one outfit and you just have to walk and the the only rule is that you're not allowed to smile which i've very so i could see people that I knew some people and they're sitting around along their lines and you instinctively want to get high or something you just have to pose face along I look like an undertaker's assistant if I don't smile we have a very long face so that was the biggest challenge of it but I loved it and being surrounded by all these literally 18, 19 year olds who didn't know me from a bar of soap and their lives are all a hell of them and what they were talking about.

55:24Richard E. Grant:I really enjoyed all of that.

55:25Bella Freud:Do you think you'll do more?

55:27Richard E. Grant:If I'm asked.

55:28Bella Freud:Yes. I can imagine. I mean, you're a natural, really. It's such a good idea. Do you ever work with a stylist? Because you go to events and you always look distinguished in a very particular way. Oh, thank you. Wear a roll neck and a velvet jacket and stuff.

55:50Richard E. Grant:No, never worked with a stylist or had a publicist or any of the altourage of people that so many other actors I know have.

55:59Bella Freud:No publicist? No. Wow.

56:03Richard E. Grant:Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong.

56:04Bella Freud:I don't think you're doing anything wrong. That's fascinating. If you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction?

56:20Richard E. Grant:It certainly makes me question them. I was pretty gobsmacked when I watched that interview that you did with a man who was promoting socks with sandals. and you said you're prone to that, that you like that look,

56:44Richard E. Grant:I find it horrifying.

56:46Bella Freud:And I think that my daughter says that I'm foot obsessed.

56:52Richard E. Grant:And I think because of where I grew up, where I was barefoot when I was a boy, and because it was so hot, you saw people in sandals a lot. And when people were newly arrived on contracts from England and their feet had been liberated from the cold, I saw some of the gnarliest, most misshapen feet. I sometimes can remember people's feet before their faces. So if you set a name to me, I remember what their feet looked like first.

57:23Bella Freud:Oh, that's so good.

57:24Richard E. Grant:The idea of plates of meat feet with bad feet or socks and sandals are passion killer supreme. So if I saw an absolutely beautiful woman, and I know that this is genetic, who had extreme hammerhead bunions, the attraction would be instantaneously killed, which tells you how superficial I am. But you can have surgery to get your feet fixed. And I know people who've done it very successfully.

58:05Bella Freud:That's good to know.

58:06Richard E. Grant:Just don't put them in sandals.

58:10Bella Freud:Well, Rosalia, she was on fashion neurosis and said that a man's feet, if they took off their shoes and socks, she saw their feet too quickly. Yeah. That was it. It was over. Over. And she said, show me your socks. I want to see your socks. It was so funny. It really took me by surprise.

58:37Richard E. Grant:Are you like that? Do you never want to see the feet until things have advanced?

58:42Bella Freud:No, I haven't thought of that. I think English feet are so bad in general, you kind of just build them into your sense of normality. So there are lots of other things, though. that I find repellent. What? What do you find repellent, apart from breath? I really don't like skinny jeans that cling to the calf. I find that it's like my wiring goes completely mad and I just want to go out of the room and come back and it's over. You know, something's changed.

59:24Richard E. Grant:Not that calf liberated.

59:25Bella Freud:But then there's also the thing of trying to find a way to get over it so that you can continue because you're not quite ready to be repelled.

59:37Richard E. Grant:Yeah.

59:37Bella Freud:And that's always the disaster.

59:40Richard E. Grant:What's your view of boob tubes?

59:42Bella Freud:Oh, I think they're adorable. I mean, they're so weird.

59:48Richard E. Grant:I think they're horrible.

59:50Bella Freud:Oh, really? They remind me of schoolgirls.

59:52Richard E. Grant:Everything's flattened here, and then you have this bump, but it's, I just wanted to pull them off or cut them off, have a strap or something, but I think they look absolutely horrendous.

1:00:05Bella Freud:I mean, I've never worn one, but I think there's something incredibly sexy about the way the breasts are holding up this band, and it's like, what's going to happen? It's quite precarious, and then you're completely fixed on their bosom. and can't stop. I mean, they're so mysterious breasts anyway.

1:00:28Richard E. Grant:Aren't they?

1:00:29Bella Freud:That anything that attracts your attention to them, I think's good.

1:00:35Richard E. Grant:I think a boob tube is a disservice to the beauty of the breast.

1:00:39Bella Freud:Right.

1:00:39Richard E. Grant:Yeah.

1:00:41Bella Freud:Don't be turned off.

1:00:43Richard E. Grant:Socks and sandals and a boob tube.

1:00:45Bella Freud:Okay, that's it.

1:00:46Richard E. Grant:I mean, you turn out of the door, pronto, presto.

1:00:52Bella Freud:And what about being naked? How do you feel about being naked?

1:00:57Richard E. Grant:Uncomfortable. Do you feel comfortable being naked?

1:01:01Bella Freud:I have to wear something to be naked. I don't like to be without anything. So if I've got one thing on, it denotes nakedness.

1:01:12Richard E. Grant:So do you wear something when you go to bed?

1:01:17Bella Freud:Oh, God, so many clothes. I'm always cold. so I wear nothing I couldn't bear sleeping that's wonderful I'd love to be like that but I wear pajama socks and I have a hot water bottle and then I have an extra blanket to sort of

1:01:34Richard E. Grant:weight me down but why don't you just put the heating up which I do but then I can't it's I wake up and I can't sleep properly so I need to be cold that's an extreme if it's set at 22 or 23 degrees then you can walk around without your clothes on it's it doesn't i've tried it doesn't work okay but uh going back to the body confidence yeah it took me a year i think it was a year before i could walk around without my clothes on in front of my wife yeah i found it i've always

1:02:08Bella Freud:found it you know self-conscious or thinking yeah too skinny stick insect like you don't didn't didn't feel confident about doing that but then i then i did i'm sure it took me longer than that

1:02:24Richard E. Grant:if not my whole marriage so thank god for clothes i know they're the best hide everything yeah and give you shoulders where you have none muscles where you have none

1:02:39Bella Freud:That's the beauty of great design. It can change your proportions. And then it kind of makes you get to accept your body. You start from the outside and then eventually you end up with some pleasure in it. Because suddenly, I don't know about you, but I find, I think, oh, it's not so bad at all. you know what why so exacting and uh but it has taken a very long time well thank you so much richard e grant for being on fashion neurosis i thank you very much for having me i could talk to you for the rest of my life i think oh my god

1:03:38Thank you.