Celebrated actor Richard E. Grant has opened up about several harrowing moments from his childhood, revealing that his alcoholic father once tried to shoot him while they were at home when he was just 15 years old. Speaking on Davina McCall’s Begin Again podcast, the Saltburn and Withnail & I star, 67, reflected on his difficult upbringing, sharing that his father, who struggled with alcoholism, pulled a gun on him when he was a teenager but the trigger faltered. He also went into detail about his complicated relationship with his mother, who passed away in 2023 and how his parents' divorce affected him.
He told Davina: “He tried to shoot me when I was 15 after I emptied all his Scotch down the sink." Describing the terrifying moment, he recalled: “As I was halfway through [pouring] the eleventh bottle, I felt a gun at the back of my head. I ducked, it went off, and I ran into the garden. He found me and said, ‘I’m going to blow your brains out.’ I told him, ‘Go on, do it, just get this over with.’”.
Explaining what happened, Richard said that his father pulled the trigger but missed. “Because he was drunk it wavered so it went straight past and I fell to the ground and ran away.”. The actor also opened up about the emotional toll of his parents’ divorce and his father’s descent into alcoholism. “Even though he became an alcoholic after my mother left, the person who I knew and loved by day outweighed the monster that he turned into when he downed a bottle of Johnnie Walker. At nine o’clock at night, he’d have this personality switch and he’d become unrecognisable.".
In another devastating memory, Grant recalled the moment he accidentally discovered his mother was having an affair with his father’s best friend. He revealed: “My mother and my father’s best friend were in the front seat of the car and stopped on the way back from a cricket match. And I was asleep on the back seat and I woke up and the lights weren’t on and I knew I wasn’t home. But there was a rhythmic movement in the car that wasn’t the car engine.
“I gingerly looked over the front seat and my mum and my dad’s best friend were having it off in the front seat. I knew that I was seeing something that I shouldn’t – I didn’t really understand what they were doing. I just kept completely quiet and pretended to be asleep.”.
Despite his difficult childhood, Grant has remained determined to live with optimism. Last year, he marked the 42nd anniversary of his move from Swaziland to the UK. While hosting the BAFTAs in 2023 eagle-eyed viewers were left wondering why Richard chose to wear two watches on his wrists, and as it turns out, it's all to do with his dual-citizenship. The first watch is set to Greenwich Meantime (GMT), and the second, which was gifted to him by his late father, is permanently set to Swaziland time.
The actor's father, Henrik Esterhuysen, sadly passed away from lung cancer at the age of 52 when he was 24. Speaking of his dad's sad death, Richard previously said: "It is a recurring regret that he never lived to see me succeed beyond university and drama.".
In 2023 Richard revealed his mother, Leonne Esterhuysen, had passed away at the age of 93. The Oscar nominated actor, 66, paid tribute to the woman who gave him the "gift of life" as he shared the news on social media. Richard - who lost his beloved wife to cancer in 2021 - reflected on the "incredibly complicated relationship" he had with his late mother and receiving a "very terse email" from her while grieving his late wife.
