Richard E. Grant

Richard E. Grant or Richard Grant (stage names of Richard Grant Esterhuysen) (1957- ) [1] is a Swazi-born stage, film and television actor.

Biography

Born in Swaziland.

Youth

Training

Trained at the University of Cape Town Drama Department under Rosalie van der Gucht, Robert Mohr and Mavis Taylor.

Career

In 1982 he left South Africa to work in the United Kingdom, where he gradually established himself as a prominent actor. In 1987 he and friends conceived and made the cult film Withnail and I, which established him as a major film talent. By the mid 1990s he had become a major Hollywood star, his films including Twelfth Night (199*), **, **, L.A Story (1991), Hudson Hawk (199*), Monsieur M..

After 1994 he gradually became involved in film productions on South African themes, including The Story of an African Farm (2004), directed by South African-born film and television director David Lister and based on the 1883 novel by South African author Olive Schreiner.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

As a student he and Fiona Ramsay and Henry Goodman founded the influential Troupe Theatre Company in 19**, for which he performed and directed a number of plays, including **. Also worked at The Space Theatre, co-directing Gerould’s Candaules Commissioner and G.M. Green’s Dolls in 197* (with Michael O’Brien), **.

He played Henry Carr in Travesties, Orlando in As You Like It, Father in Six Characters in Search of an Author, Haimon in Antigone, Slift in Saint Joan of the Stockyards, Rimbaud in Total Eclipse, Hou in Fanshen.

Together with Michael O’Brien he directed the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Kafka’s Metamorphosis starring Steven Berkoff, Henry Goodman, Fiona Ramsay and Ian Roberts at the Market Theatre in 1980. He directed East, Dolls and in 1980 Chinchilla at the People's Space.