Richard E. Grant, a famous actor, has revealed details about a number of agonizing events from his early life, including how his drunk father once tried to shoot him while they were visiting 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 went into great detail about how his parents’ divorce affected him and how complicated his relationship with his mother, who passed away in 2023, was.
When I was 15 and I had all of my Scotch down the sink, he told Davina, “He tried to shoot me.” 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. It wavered, and I fell to the ground and fled as a result of his drunken behavior.
The actor also made an emotional comment about his father’s descent into alcoholism and his parents’ divorce. “The person I knew and loved by day outweighed the monster he turned into when he downed a bottle of Johnnie Walker,” he said. “Even though he became an alcoholic after my mother left. At nine o’clock at night, he’d have this personality switch and he’d become unrecognisable”.
Another heartbreaking memory is that of Grant’s untold encounter with his father’s best friend, who was unintentionally his mother. He revealed that my mother and my father’s best friend were stopped on the way home from a cricket game in the front seat. And when I woke up, the lights weren’t on, and I was aware that I wasn’t home, I was asleep in the back seat. However, the car had a rhythmic shift that wasn’t related to the engine.
My mom and my dad’s best friend were having a fight in the front seat when I gingerly glanced over the front seat. I knew that I was seeing something that I shouldn’t – I didn’t really understand what they were doing. I simply snoozed and appeared to be asleep.
Despite his difficult childhood, Grant has remained determined to live with optimism. He annihilated his 42nd wedding anniversary from Swaziland to the UK last year.
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 second watch, which his late father gave him, is permanently set to Swaziland time, while the first is set to Greenwich Meantime (GMT).
The actor’s father, Henrik Esterhuysen, sadly passed away from lung cancer at the age of 52 when he was 24. Richard once recalled his father’s tragic passing, saying, “It is a recurring regret that he never lived to see me succeed beyond my studies and drama.”
In 2023 Richard revealed his mother, Leonne Esterhuysen, had passed away at the age of 93. As he shared the news on social media, the 66-year-old actor, who was nominated for an Oscar, hailed the woman who “gifted him the gift of life.” Richard, who lost his beloved wife to cancer in 2021, reflected on the “incredibly complicated relationship” he had with his late mother and the “very brief email” she sent him while grieving his late wife.
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Source: Mirror
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